Magness
by V Translanka
Summary: A desperate quest for hope in a hopeless landscape. A search. A journey. A redemption quest?...Magus, one year after the events of CT. Cameos from various CT & CC characters in familiar and unfamiliar roles. I like to think I know Magus enough to do this.
1. Chapter 01, Convalescence of Hope

** 11,999 B.C. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 1-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES**  
**CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "CONVALESCENCE OF HOPE"  
**

"There is _no_ hope!" The voice echoed into his mind like a splinter ebbing back and forth into an enormous blood blister long caked in its own blackened sludge, "You will _not_ find-"

"I _will_." He commanded the voice in a soft dulled tone and strode on into the wastelands of the newly formed and now snowcapped burgs. A chant, a spell, a faint white glow about his head, and then the plunge into the endless caverns of the awaiting abyss... 

If you let the cold engulf you, if you become one with it, it cannot sway you. Your body will still grow cold and blue, but you can ignore these things and move on if you don't struggle against it. His blood seamlessly synched with the water around him; it chilled and almost froze as it swarmed within his veins. Eyes turned into unblinking search beacons, casting rays this way and that in the wreckage of the deep. 

His weapon was held long and behind him, making him look like a kind of tropical fish or ray with its upturned blade bending and catching the last hints of light from above. Legs and arms stopped, the scythe was brought around, his lips moved slowly, a flare of red light emanated from the blade, and the rubble was lit up, to hi s concealed horror and disgust. 

Twisted metals, broken shards of shiny glass-like material, and a fish gnawing on something that resembled a right hand (already missing its index and middle fingers) were only a few of the sights. It was a hand. He could somehow smell the decay and blood under there. Even in the cold of the water, he knew that smell, intimately. It was a part of a former life that seemed far away now, in a distant dream. 

There was no time for that. There was never enough time for anything anymore. Again, the voice begged him to stop, "No hope..." It pleaded with the horrible ache of despair, "...Nothing left." This time he chose to ignore it, and he went on. 

* * *

Three months' time was spent in this same grueling manner. Several hours would pass; he would rise from the depths to a solid chunk of ice and command it not to move from its spot. Upon doing so, he would either rest, partake in the local variety of Salmon-like fish (of which he had detested as a child though now it had a more elegant taste with a simple spell he once watched a sorceress cast..._or was it a wizard?_ he thought to himself), or fight/ignore the voice until one of them gave up for another hour or so.

He finally thought he saw something, a faint glow or light, when he found the ruins of the ominously blackened Water Fortress. But it was not a glow or a light, it was nothing. Neither a scrap of clothing, nor a hint of flesh or bone-and certainly not the ornament the wise men had given her, although the last he had seen it with her the light was fading fast-was found. For all he knew, that jewel was powerless and in the belly of some sea beast by now. Although he knew it had to be otherwise. 

Then he noticed it; the decay, the smell of blood. It did not reside in this room, this one room that proved to be, quite easily, the most important room in his entire life; the room where he had lost everything...twice. Now it proved again to be important on some fundamental level. This was another Omen. Not a Black one, no, but one of hope, a White Omen of sorts. Three soundless words escaped his lips, bound for the voice that taunted him. 

"There _is_ hope." 

* * *

There was a way now, he knew. It would be tricky, and he wouldn't like the path, but there it was, plain as the chill that ran up and down his spine when he dived in and out of the icy blackness. Would he need someone like those times before? He didn't know. He'd only know on the way. Like before.

Was this destiny? No, he knew too much about how things worked now (had, in fact, since he was a child) to believe in fate. Sure, some things can be pulled and prodded with wire strings and bamboo poles, but there is no such thing as fate (he remembered hearing someone talking to a Poyozo about this somewhere in his childhood; perhaps it was a dream, or perhaps it was both). 

* * *

The heavy oaken door seemed to stand without any support. The hinges were attached to nothingness. Upon the door, three words were writ. No, they weren't written, they were engraved, they were part of the door. The edges of the large black letters seemed brimmed with gold. This is what they said: 

**--- (The Princess) ---**

**(Kid)**

The handle was the same type of shining gold that lined the letters. It beckoned to be held, to be turned, to be pulled. He had no choice. His thin hand, gloved in comfortable leather, went to it, held it, turned it, and pulled it as if it were made of paper. A fantastic swirl of blue light emerged and engulfed the doorway. He stepped forward, into the light, entranced with the sounds of wind and rapture that surrounded him. 

The blue light stretched past him in great bright folds of azure, sapphire, cerulean, and indigo. He came out of the light and into an unfamiliar bustling place. The blue light faded to a dot behind him. No one in this place seemed to notice this happen. He didn't notice the blue light behind him nor did he notice most of the people. Her hair seemed different, a faded yellow color, and her entire image seemed to fade in and out of view. But her eyes; they were the same sharp color; and they did not fade with the rest of her. 

For a long moment, a few seconds, a few minutes, a lifetime? He stood there transfixed, hypnotized, gazing upon this sight. His feet moved forward, but every time they did, she stayed exactly the same distance away. His hand shot out in desperation. His mouth opened to call to her. 

* * *

The ground was damp with dew. The cool night air was fresh and unsullied to the point of hygienic cleanliness that reminded him of something like Windex. The stars in the sky twinkled more than he had ever remembered seeing them as a child. The truth was that there was more dust in the atmosphere, remnants of "_The Destruction_". 

His skin seemed luminous in the gloom of those hours of darkness as he woke from his dream. A stern look of consternation spread across his face. 

"Where was it?" He whispered to himself. He couldn't remember where the door without walls had stood. He couldn't remember what the unfamiliar place it led to looked like, the people there, or the clothing they wore. 

"No hope in dreams." The voice said to him, laden with its own sad dismay. 

* * *

The great and powerful witching hour was upon him. He dug at the earth beneath the tomb's small stone indicator (no one else would ever know she was there) with his hands and they became caked in the coffee-colored dirt. Every now and then, he'd look up; checking the stars to make sure the hour hadn't passed. _Shouldn't have fallen asleep_ he told himself. The dream meant something though, that's why things happened the way they did. 

Then he came upon it at last. It was wrapped in a smooth material he knew well (although now smudged with dirt in several places, most of it flaked off the silk as he had broken up the earth). It had been a part of his wardrobe until he had finally come back here. He quickly, though with meticulous care, stripped the cape from the figure before him. 

It was a wondrous marvel. The skin was the same creamy color he had remembered from the later parts of his childhood. Before, she had a slightly auburn-colored tone, full of life and radiance. There was almost no sign of decay. It was as if the slimy maggots and worms he had almost expected wished to stay away from the body. Her cerulean hair was fading to white, but had grown a few inches longer since he had buried her. Her perfectly trimmed and manicured nails had also grown out considerably, but the tips remained in tact like a ghost of proper etiquette. 

The smell was the same though; the smell of death. There is a base smell to death outside of just blood and decay. It's a soulless smell, the same as an empty attic or crawlspace; a stale smell like woodchips, only somehow entirely different. He did not gag or hold his nose in disgust, but simply took the glove off his right hand as he straddled her waist. With that hand he stroked her cheek lovingly, as if she were a delicate porcelain doll. He said a brief prayer; it too was a phantom of that former life as a child. 

"I'm sorry..." The words seemed so foreign to him now. He couldn't remember ever speaking them to anyone but possibly his sister. He lifted her cotton shirt and exposed her stomach, her chest, her long cold, yet still somehow supple breasts. He touched one of her milk chocolate-colored areola and his face contorted into a small frown. It was much closer to the color he remembered her skin being. At this, he readied his scythe, "...I know you would understand...mother." 

* * *

Those words too had been difficult to say. He hadn't thought of her as such since he was a youth, since before her shift. At first he and his sister had almost thought it was simply grief over the passing of their father. There was something else though. She became a workhorse, almost never ceasing. She still seemed obsessed with the energy transfer, even though it had taken their father from them. He remembered her taunting and laughing at him then; telling him that he too deserved to be bound to the earth with the others whom lacked her own form of enlightenment. This person who took his mother ate away at his very soul and it angered him.

Of course, there was something more important than those base things, they knew, something else that flowed around them; the Black Wind. It never died within him, even when he was sent away, even when he grew to be a man, when he was confronted by the people set out to kill him, even as that great flaming bastard was finally destroyed in his, no, _this_, very era, right before his eyes. The Wind still raged on. It had reminded him of his goals, it guided him, and after many years, it saw to it that the fiery demon was defeated. It seemed to taunt him at first when he was a child, he remembered, much like the voice was doing now. 

Again, there was no time to be reflecting on the past. No time for memories he would much rather forget. Times he'd much rather change. He shook the thoughts from his head and focused on the task at hand. 

* * *

He had made the difficult journey back past the badlands of snow and ice. He went on even beyond the other, scattered, jutting debris of that ominously dark tower; that dark tower which had brought forth both a terrible nightmare and a fabulous dream when his eyes first lay upon it, floating high above. He went to the New Mountain, not much further to the South. Here, more winds and even more cold assailed him, screaming for him to fall, trying to coax him to leave. Rocks and dust fell upon him; trying to push him back, make him slip, lose his grip, burn his eyes. He would not be stopped by such small forces of nature. It would take a demon with as great power as his own to accomplish such a feat.

Another night fell and another witching hour came upon him. It was then that he found that which he had sought, The Cave of Time. The blue dot of entry-which had always reminded him of a curtain that had a hole in it blocking the sun-was long gone. That he already knew though. He had come back from this place before, after leaving the End. 

He opened the pack-he had only just recently acquired after returning-that he had slung over his right shoulder. It was just half filled with various objects: his Amulet, a couple extra changes of clothing, various medical supplies and magical drugs, and many other small trinkets. The two he went for were enveloped in part of that cape that was still wrapped around his mother, who was now safely buried back in the ground. 

He opened them with the same gentleness he had used when he touched his mother's cheek. The first was a pale-white curved tusk of ivory-like material. The second now reminded him of some dried pink fruit, like a large unripe strawberry or cherry. It was divided into four parts, and it was encrusted with a dark (was it black?) substance that had the texture of mostly hardened muck or mud. 

Foreign, alien, mystical words stirred from out of his voice. He held the murky, mysterious heart in his left hand, the pointy pallid white rib in his other. 

"Now the divine hour has arrived...Give my being from this world to...!" At that moment, he struck the jagged point of the rib into the center of the heart. Nothing happened. His eyes remained transfixed on the object before him; the impaled heart. At first he thought the rib was falling out of the heart, and that was what made the enchantment fail. Then he saw that it was not just the top portion of the rib that was disappearing into the nucleus of the heart, but the bottom end as well. It was being absorbed by it. 

He stood there hypnotized by the sight until the rib was gone. After a moment, he thought that it again would not succeed. Then it happened. The heart began to throb with new life and vitality. The dark sludge burned off-the smoke attacked his senses-and the heart glowed healthy pink once again. He felt relieved somewhat. Things were suddenly going as he had planned. The beating of the heart intensified and filled his ears with their heavy drumming. 

Then it struck him; like that first bolt of lightning that had smashed into him back in his castle when he fought the kid-whom he would later, in the Water Fortress and on Death Mountain, learn to secretly admire-and the despicable frog. He saw it; the electrical surge of power radiating from the heart. It was a sinister dark light, like a shadow. It spread up his arm with zeal and a fever-pitch rate of speed. 

More than hurt and more than shocked, he was annoyed. This was a surprise and he did not enjoy surprises. He buckled under the pulsing heart's power and was forced down to one knee. The heart pulsated with a bright red glow that grew with each beat and began to fill the room with crimson light. He was feeling faint. The radiance of the light was getting too bright for his eyes. He was absorbed in it though, no matter how hard he tried to pull his face away, his eyes stuck to that image of the brilliantly bright, ruby heart that was clasped in a death grip in his hand. 

He could not endure it much longer; it was sapping his strength, draining his energy, expending his ability, it was killing him. 

"I _knew_ it." A faint echo of a voice told him. It seemed so far away, the room seemed so far away. Everything felt so far away, "I_told_ you. _Didn't_ I? There is _no_ hope. Do you think _she_ remembers _you_? Do you think _she_ cares what happens to _you_? I'd bet that she's moved on by now. She's found a man to settle down with. She's had children. She hasn't thought about you like you have ached over the years for her. And now you're going to _die_; and for what?" 

"For _her_, for _everything_ I've lived for, fought for, and even _died_ for." He said through clenched teeth, biting back the pain. He could no longer feel his fingers, his hand was going numb, and his arm was burning in pain, "_I_ don't matter." 

"So be it." Another voice, this one delicate, not the other, cutting voice, but much more familiar, loving, affectionate, resonated from within his mind. No, not from within, almost, but no, it came from the direction of his hand, the heart, "Find your sister, my son." 

The brilliant burgundy light flashed and flickered into a profoundly deep cobalt blue that filled the room with its own dazzling intensity-it was only then that he saw the resemblance of this light to the frozen, watery depths of that vast Zealian Ocean which he had spent the last seven or eight fortnights immersed within. The Cave of Time flicked out of existence, and all was that vivid blue, rushing past him in every direction. His scythe was seized in his right hand, his pack of odds and ends tucked under his elbow at his side, and the now fading heart was still held-now much more gently-in his left hand. 

He continued to watch as his mother's heart quietly disappeared from all existence. A rhyme he had long forgot that his sister had recited at their father's wake came suddenly into his mind. Before even that, their mother had whispered it so softly into each of their ears on their fifth year, so soothingly, like they were still newborn babes. 

"_Live another day._  
_Fight another fight._  
_Struggle against the darkness,_  
_Do it for the light._

_If you stop,_  
_Before your last breath,_  
_You're living naught._  
_You're living death._

_So be brave._  
_Be of sound mind._  
_Endure life's jolts,_  
_Tolerate the grind._

_Live and love,_  
_Forget your hate._  
_Peace is with you._  
_Don't yield to fate._

_The Black Wind will blow,_  
_And then you will know._  
_The dark may fight,_  
_But so too will your light._" 

The blue light was giving way. It was opening up, into another world, another time. Where was it, and most importantly, _when_ was it? Everything seemed so unfamiliar now. The heart was gone, but his powers weren't fully restored. He didn't even know if they would be restored. For all he knew, some evil beasts could be lurking around the next bend. His left arm lay slack at his side. He could still no longer feel his fingers, but the dullness was very slowly, and agonizingly, departing. 

In its place, sharp, hot pins and needles seemed to strike every part of his arm, burning straight to the nerves. He let out a small dissatisfied grunt, with a scowl spread across his face, before he passed out and struck the hard surface of the ground. Was it rock, compact dirt, or metal? 

There was no time for that. There didn't seem to ever be enough time for much of anything anymore. A trickle of blood ran down his temple and clotted in the light blue hair of his brow. He could no longer tell or be bothered in knowing or not knowing. 

* * *

**_If history is to change, let it..._**

* * *

**__**


	2. Chapter 02, The Halls of Vita

** 2420 A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 2-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES**  
**CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "THE HALLS OF VITA"**

The etched door opened again, the blue swirl swallowed him, the crowds of unsuspecting, unnoticed people shifted back and forth between himself and his shimmering objective. His feet moved forward again, gaining no distance. Did he seem to know it was useless? He couldn't think. He didn't think. A gloved hand shot out again, his hand. His mouth opened, teeth bared in absolute anxiety, in desperation to speak, to plead, to yell, to scream.

* * *

The words from the voice resonated into his mind again. Not the pleading, distressed, driving, despondent voice. The other one, the one that came from the heart, "Find your sister, my son." Was it his mother's voice? He couldn't remember how it sounded. The bleeding (just now clotting) scrape on his temple seemed to cloud the past events in a neat shade of lifeless gray. 

He looked down and saw that the floor was a kind of steel plating. He was in some sort of man-made dwelling. By this simple piece of information, he knew he wasn't in The Destruction of Zeal-time anymore. He wasn't in The Guardia Mystic Conflict-time either it seemed; no, definitely not 600 A.D. Both the Guardians and the Mystics would use some kind of granite or marble, some kind of stone at least, not the glistening metal he saw beneath him.

The words registered and struck him square: 'beneath him'. He was standing. His weapon and pack were not with him. The murky gray that bounded and dully pounded his mind had held these things from him. His left hand just as suddenly-seemingly to make up for the time his cloudy mind had hidden it from his sensory perception-burst into suffering, agonizing flame. His teeth bore, wicked and sharp, and showed his pain. It was as if someone were lighting his hand on fire with a blazing torch. This pain departed almost as quickly as it had assaulted him. In its place came a softer version of the fiery pins and needles again, along with a softer scowl across his face.

More aspects of the room and his condition came into focus. The room was a dull metal box; roughly thirty by twenty feet in diameter. There seemed to be a silhouette of a door, but no knob, no lever, no switch. He was in the future. He had seen similar doors before, when he traveled with the boy. These doors weren't locked with the Zealian seal though; they were the normal doors of the future that he thought would open if he could only stand in front of it. So he went to go to the door.

Yet another facet of the new place occurred to him out of the blue. His arms, his legs, and his throat were each bound in an electrical device. To the backs of his limbs were metal boxes, each adorned with code pads and blinking lights. These metal boxes wrapped his extremities in a faint white light that seized him snugger than any metal cuffs could. They were chained with a similar stream of light to a console to his right.

He moved toward the console. A spark of light struck his head as he collided with another stream of light. This one was a wall that blocked his approach to the console. The streams from the 'cuffs' seamlessly drifted to and fro when he moved back and forth from the console, but when he approached the door, they constricted and would allow him to go no further.

A panel lifted from the wall toward his right, beyond the console, revealing a concealed, circular, glass object. It looked like a gun. More so, it resembled the laser weapons of that heaping automaton that was with the boy when he traveled along with them. He darted to get out of the path of the ensuing stream of light that came from it.

"You are being detained for further chrono-sequential analysis. You have violated Novous Ordo Seclorum Convention Temporal Codes 84-S13..." It was not a laser at all. When he looked back he saw it was not man-made Shadow Magic, but it was in fact a man. No, not truly a man, for a man does not radiate light in that manner, a man's features are not so dull, nor are any man's form so eerily translucent. It was a hologram. It reminded him of the robot central core network. This one was a much more advanced form than that one he had seen previously though. The network had required three separate interfaces to be projected and sustained as a corporal being of light. This one required what looked like only one.

The hologram droned on, "...time travel under unspecified and unfounded means, 45-F06, possession of unidentified narcotic substances, 91-M03, possession of illegal and unregistered weapons, 09-C30, security breech in sector 770.907, and 06-C45, breaking and entering."

He had turned away from the shimmering figure at the second code violation declaration. The shadow cast by the hologram of his body was faint because of the room's somewhat heavy lighting, but as soon as the hologram flickered off, the shadow disappeared, and the plate slid back over the hologram interface, he realized what he could do. The streams from the light-shackles moved freely between the barrier of light between him and the console. He let out a slight chuckle of amusement. It seemed they truly _were_ in need-_dire need now_ he thought-of a "chrono-sequential analysis" of him, because they had underestimated him. Their world, their time, had forgotten, their documents didn't show them, or it was even possible that they had rejected the absurdity of it, of...Magic.

"Fools...Underestimate me will you...," He whispered the words under his breath. The simple, apprentice-level spell was chanted in mere seconds. He lifted his good, right hand and the bolt of lightning flew past the wall of light with the fluidity of water and struck the console, burning, charring, and disrupting circuitry. The beams of light glimmered and died, the shackles fell off, and the door opened before his presence.

His bad, left hand still hung lifeless at his side, and it annoyed him. He did not know what sorts of mechanized monstrosities, holographic humans, or secret traps awaited him. He would want his hand back. More importantly, he would want his scythe and supplies back. His Amulet was stolen from him and he was angry for it.

His clothes remained the same; they had left him with that much dignity at least. His plain leather vest still hugged him tightly, yet comfortably, a blue cloth was wrapped around the more flexible (and thusly more exposed to the cold) mid-section. His light, plum-colored pants, with the inch-wide metal band wrapped around his right leg, disappeared into his shin-high, worn-in, soft-soled, leather boots. His forearm-length gloves (also leather) were the same, but he noticed that they had done a thorough search and had found the small charms and medicines he had held within their inner pockets.

The doorway from his waiting cell led in a dark and damp hallway. It stank of decay and must. The lengthy metal walls of the hall had gone grimy from time. There was no one waiting, nothing out there to get him, yet. He could see the hall's end to the left of his cell door and so went on down the right.

As he went on down the empty and lengthy hall, he came upon various cells similar to his own. The only exception being that no one occupied these rooms. The dankness of the place began to thin as he went, but it was still just as distinct. The hall took a slight curvature to the right. In a moment, extended by the emptiness, the vacant rooms, and the silence, he came to a small split in the hall. The right rounded sharply and looked like another long hall filled with a similar, albeit opposite curve and more empty cells.

He took the other direction, which was more of a nexus forward of the two hallways' points. The whole place seemed to be in the shape of an upside-down "Y". Panels of light began to brighten and come to life above him, where further down the hall they were only flickering fireflies. This provided him with even less cover in the exposed and cramped corridor. As he went on, he wondered if the people who had captured him weren't somehow watching him. Could it be that they were analyzing him even now?

"You're going to be found. You're going to be killed." The drifting, doubtful voice reminded him. He went on. Doors to either side of this hall contained only a minuscule amount of things, nothing useful. Many were simply more cells, others were a bigger mess hall, a meeting hall with a large metallic desk, and even a few toilets. But after a while the doors thinned out and the hair at the back of his neck began to stand up.

The end finally struck him with a much larger, double-door version of the doors he had previously seen. Instead of going up or down, this one split at the middle and opened outward to the left and right. The right part of the door's circuitry ceased to function properly; a crease of light came out from behind the door as it jerked back and forth spasmodically, rhythmically.

He snuck up to the door with a silent grace that had taken him only days of boyhood curiosity to perfect. The room itself was poorly lit. The light that came from within originated from a large monitor in the very back of the room. Three shapes stood at different parts of the screen. A glare streaked itself across the monitor from a light out of sight to the left. The one directly in front was conversing with someone he couldn't see.

"There is 'insufficient data' in regard to what exactly?" The middle person said in a barely audible, raspy voice.

"600 A.D. is a possible origin." A voice (did it seem familiar?) said that seemed to resonate from deep in the room, "There is insufficient data regarding the true origin of the subject in question."

"How is it only 'a possible origin'?" The person to the right asked. Its voice seemed to cackle with static. He couldn't hear any of their voices outside of the resonating one very well, "A time traveler? Wouldn't we have more on a subject if he were a time traveler?"

"The subject's TDNA goes further back, closer to 12,000 B.C." The voice said, "This era is mostly unknown to us presently. Further information is required. Suggest a questioning of the subject immediately."

"You know we can not do that." The being to the right stated matter-of-factly.

"Clotho is correct. It is a breach of Temporal Code to distribute information regarding future timelines, regardless of situation." The person to the left announced. Its voice was more subdued, rather effeminate.

"It is also a breach of Temporal Code to keep temporal refugees." The person in the middle said.

"Detainment was necessary." The right being countered, "Contravention of Temporal Code 09-C30, security breech in sector 770.907, is a high priority offence."

"Prometheus, do you still suggest questioning even with the added danger of further breaking Temporal Code?" The person identified as Clotho asked.

"Questioning is necessary for further advancement in chrono-sequential analysis. The subject cannot be released otherwise regardless." The voice said, "Further temporal disturbance is forbidden. If the subject is a traveler, it should have means of further travel, which it does not."

"Then we question." The one on the right said. At that, each of them swiveled in unison, with the grace of a troupe of ballerina. They each took quick, fluid steps toward the door. They were firm and unwavering, yet time seemed to slow, to stop, as they moved. Still they came, closer and closer.

Clotho led the way, hitting the jittering door, causing it to open for the three of them. They stepped out into a long, but compact, empty hall. Clotho and the one on the right stood side-by-side, which was the maximum allowable space, and the one on the left followed behind them.

They weren't human.

Clotho raised a hand to stop their advancement after the door behind them closed. The moment before Clotho began to speak stretched out into an eternity. He took this time to properly examine these new adversaries. His closest thought was that they resembled that robotic ally that had accompanied himself and the boy; although these three had many obvious differences.

For one, they seemed to have a more female anatomy to them; they were slimmer at the waists, wider at the breast, and they even had more pronounced-and functioning-lips. They were obviously far more advanced than any automaton he had ever encountered previously. Their structure much more closely resembled that of a human, each with only a few exception of a robotic extension here or there.

Clotho's metal had a green tint, the one beside her, a blue, and the one behind had a pink hue. Their eyes glowed, or twinkled, their respective colors. Clotho opened her mouth to speak to the others, "Perhaps Prometheus is malfunctioning."

"What makes you say this?" The pink one asked.

"Should Prometheus suggest breaking Temporal Code, even if it is the only alternative?" The blue one asked, backing up Clotho's point.

"Perhaps_you_ two are malfunctioning."

"You are always so unquestioning of Prometheus, Atropos. Perhaps you are malfunctioning as well." Clotho retorted.

"And you and Lachesis are always so questioning of Prometheus. Perhaps we are all malfunctioning."

"Let us worry about Prometheus later." Lachesis stated, "Questioning the subject is the only course of action we can take, malfunctioning or not."

"Agreed." Atropos said.

"Agreed." Clotho said with a curt nod.

They dragged on down the corridor, their soft-soled feet making only a whisper of sound as they went. After they were out of hearing range, his right arm buckled, he spat his lifeless left hand from his clenched teeth and he dropped down from the ceiling. A single bead of sweat traced down his cheek before he wiped it away. He had been up there no longer than two minutes, but it seemed like it was still going on. His right arm twitched and he flexed it, trying to get the blood flowing into it again.

"Prometheus...?" He wondered to himself, "Atropos?"

He shook off the familiar names. He didn't have time to sit and ponder. After they reached his cell, they'd realize he wasn't there, and they would look for him. They would find him.

He entered the shadowy room, completely enraptured in his element. The room was somehow more colorless and filled with even more melancholy than the halls and his cell had been. Aside from the main console that the three robots had occupied, a slightly askew lamplight shone off to the left, the source of the glare on the main screen. Every wall glittered with a full assortment of esoteric lights and dials and meters that he would _never_ understand.

Various shut doors stood to his left and right, like poised guards watching his every movement, as he approached the main console. The glare gently subsided and he saw and recognized the very familiar face on the screen. It was Prometheus, R66-Y, aka Robo. He lifted a brow at the sight.

"Magus, I knew you would escape." The hidden speakers announced and the eyes of the image of Prometheus in the screen glowed and pulsed with the words.

"Do not call me that." He said plainly.

"Shall I call you Janus then, or perhaps 'Prophet'?"

"Neither." He said abruptly, "How do _you_ know who _I_ am?"

"I know because I am meant to know."

"Don't give me that bullshit. How do you know?" He spat the question out, even though he knew he didn't have the time to be asking questions.

"Do not worry. They have been subdued. I locked them into your cell and overloaded a few of their primary circuits as soon as they entered." The computer shifted focus as if reading his thoughts.

"Why?" He was mystified by the turn of events.

"We are not allowed to keep or question you for one."

"And for another...?" He asked.

"I am not allowed to disclose information on the events of 12,000 B.C. Much less give out any information pertaining _you_ in _600 A.D._"

He gave this new information a quick dismissal and then said, "The _Chrono Trigger_."

"Pardon...?"

"You know what I mean." He said, shifting quick glances to the sides of the room, constantly aware that the doors to his left and right could hold any and all sort of devices that could eradicate him.

"Ah, you are referring to the Time Egg! Of course, it must be what you seek."

"Tell me." He said, the two words on the brink of a command.

"I am afraid any information I give you will not help. There has only been_ one_ stable Time Egg, and you witnessed its destruction."

"How is it possible that you know all of this?"

"I have told you already."

"Of course, you were _meant_ to know." He said with a snarl, "Give me the information, I'll decide if it's helpful or not."

"If you insist..." The voice continued with something that resembled an electronic version of a sigh, "One Lucca Ashtear, circa 1025 A.D. has been developing, unsuccessfully I might add, the means to travel to critical points in time via exponential temporal energy waves, a.k.a. a Chrono Trigger."

"Now, tell me where my belongings are." Before he could finish, one of the doors to his right whooshed upward, revealing his effects.

"Take them away then. Possession of many of those artifacts is illegal, and Temporal Code would be enforced more strictly, if they weren't so archaic." The machine told him, "Might I suggest the use of a more concealable weapon? It is not as if you will always be in 600 A.D. where people actually revered and feared the name of Magus."

"I might take it under consideration, but I am _not_ Magus." He said with distaste as he slung his pack around one shoulder, replaced various items, and held his scythe in his right hand. After doing this, he noted his left hand again, he'd need to treat it soon, but now wasn't the time, "How do I get out of here?"

Another door, this one to the left, opened, "There is a Temporal Displacement System within. I am afraid that too is against Temporal Code to use though."

"I'm going to use it anyway."

"Yes, I am aware of that."

"Then why are you telling me all of this?"

"I am helping you because I am supposed to. It is my purpose." Prometheus stated, "I must tell you also about the Temporal Code violations because they will be used against you afterwards."

"Afterwards...after what...?"

"After the Temporal Code Enforcers find out about all of this..." Prometheus said solemnly, "...After that, a full investigation will be held. My circuitry will be dissected and I will be permanently shut down. Of course, all data I am meant to conceal will remain so, though I am not able to conceal that which Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos have currently discerned."

"No, you said they would be used against _me_." He said, a bit agitated.

"Oh, of course, you wish to know the implications regarding you. During the investigation, they will find out that you have used the TDS, and they will find your whereabouts. They will try and detain you for questioning at any and all costs."

"Why would I be so important to them?"

"Well, your code violations aside, you are a temporal disturbance, and as an anomaly, you are only growing as you go further in time."

"Looks like I'll be hunted then."

"You will become priority number one."

"Wait, won't they be able to track me down to _this_ time, right now?" He asked frantically.

"Most certainly not, it is impossible. Time travel is not so precise. Travel is only possible to the point of time of the exit or presence of the last traveler."

"What do you mean?"

"I am afraid time has run out and it is time for you to go. Find Miss Ashtear. Give her my regards." The speakers let out a sound that seemed like a faint laugh, "Of course, I do not expect you to actually do that."

He gave an annoyed, unsatisfied look downward and proceeded toward the door to the left. The path was opening before him, but there were so many unfulfilled questions he knew would come about later. Would he find her so easily?

"Goodbye traveler of time, man of many names." Prometheus' voice faded as the door closed behind him. The device's settings showed 1025 A.D. There was no specific date, as Prometheus said there could not be. He wondered _when_ in that year he would end up. Would they really not know when exactly he was? Would they be able to travel to the time he popped up in 1025 or would time go forward like it did before, and they wouldn't be able to pinpoint his exact location in 1025? Again, there was no more time.

He stepped up onto the platform, and the energy transfer began almost immediately. He got only the briefest hint of a glance at the cautionary notification just above the machine's main console:

******EXPERIMENTAL TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT SYSTEM**  
**Designed For Operation by Vita Hardware Only**  
**Prometheus Supervision Required**  
**Separate System Needed For Use with Non-Robotics**

An irritated look started on his face before time was torn. It was not the pleasant deep ocean blue of any of the previous portals he had been through. In a second, the world cracked away and was replaced with a dull electric yellow filled with sparks and bolts of blackness. In fact, it even felt entirely different. Instead of that fleeting, instant feeling of traveling without moving, it was more like a ripping, splitting sensation, followed with lavish amounts of pain and agony. Time and space were being physically and unnaturally split open like a gapping knife wound. It was extraordinary.

His eyes became small pin-pricks as he was enveloped in the torture and the hurt of it all. His right fist clenched deeply at his scythe, nearly crushing it. Energy surged through his left, giving it new life, and just as instantly, new anguish. The nails of his left hand's fingers bore through the leather of his glove, through his skin, and fresh blood blotted his hand.

A very base part-somewhere in the back perhaps-of his brain thought that soon enough the pain would subdue, if not because it would actually stop, than because his nerves would dull and it would have to reseed. That part of his brain was proven wrong. Seconds floated. Minutes crawled. Hours dwindled. Whole days were rising and dying in the endless cycle of pain. His brain did not shut down because of the pain. The pain kept him awake. It kept him going. Centuries and eras passed before his sightless, unseeing eyes in a kaleidoscope of yellow and black like an old carousel on its last legs, somehow deliberate, unhurried, and leisurely in its circles. Around and around it went.

If he saw the robot-any robot for that matter-or whatever was possessed with the Prometheus circuitry next, he would obliterate it with great vengeance and furious anger. Yes, all robots must go. He could not think these thoughts presently, but they would be the first thoughts that would drift in the back of his head after he came out and the pain started to fade away. That did not come for what seemed like an eternity, a lifetime, forever.

* * *

******__****...But I was another person then...**

******_

* * *

_**


	3. Chapter 03, Dying Full Moon

** 1025 A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 3-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES**  
**CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "DYING FULL MOON"**

Lucca Ashtear was in her late thirties. She had hit the middle of the road. From there on, she couldn't classify herself as living anymore. From there on, it was only a downward spiral of decay and eventual senility. Her peak had been hit well over ten years ago. Her research continually hit snags now that she could neither fix nor undo. Her once striking pink hair, which from afar and in the wrong lighting seemed brown, was now thinning and white sprouts were appearing. She was dying. 

Her legacy was no longer her science or her own, now ephemeral brilliance. She had never had children; had never had a partner with which to have any to start with. Her early years were spent formulating and adventuring. That isn't to say children were never or weren't a big part of her life though. She had started an orphanage no more than twenty years past. It had started with the last child to enter a gate; with _her_, with Kid. 

She had gone away on her own quest as she grew and matured. Often times Lucca would wonder and reminisce about Kid, her "Little Sister"._Was she doing alright? Of course she was_ she would tell herself. It was _her_ after all. What was she doing? Where was she? _When_ was she? Her amulet could have taken her to countless worlds. Or could it have? There were no more gates she would remind herself, she had made sure of it. Or were there? Obviously something was meant for Kid. She could feel _it_ again, stirring, rising from its sleep. 

Lucca wished she could have gone with her, but it wasn't her time anymore, she knew that, Kid knew that. Nothing was said. She left one chilly summer night. No good byes, no hugs or kisses, no tears. Just a sorrowful note filled with innuendos of unknown fates and burning fires of fervor that needed, no, _demanded_ satisfaction. It was the sort of letter she too would have left her mother if her own adventure had called for it. 

Yet, still, she shed no tears for her. Tears would be admitting something. It would be like saying out loud that Kid was no longer just a kid, she was grown and was facing similar perils. It would mean that she believed that Kid could be dead. Kid was tougher than that. Kid was stronger than anyone she had ever seen. Although she sacrificed her femininity to accomplish this, that tomboy part of her was just another quirk that made Kid unique. 

Fortunately (or not), the orphanage still kept her busy most of the time. A few years back (Kid had yet to leave, she remembered), the whole place had almost been burnt down when a few components of circuitry in her room had overloaded. Luckily she was there and her Ice Gun put the flames out quickly. She had cursed herself for her carelessness, although it seemed as though she had taken every necessary precaution. The added distress wasn't needed, so she had a laboratory extension built onto the back of the house to keep the children safe. 

There was always a fresh face every month or so in from Porre or the farming sections of Truce. The children were always there. She enjoyed the consistency of it all. It was all so neatly ordered and yet so overly chaotic at the same time. There was a feeling of content with her current life outside of her own diminishing scientific prowess. Adventuring was a part of her past that she told the children like fairytales. Older children could not find it within themselves to believe her stories, but nonetheless they did not question her. She was their Big Sis'; if she said it happened then it must have. Her world was moving on.

* * *

It was night when he arrived. At least, it was night when his consciousness arrived. Enormous waves of self bashed-broke-into him long after his corporal body stood there beside an immense evergreen tree. He had only seconds to raise his arms to meet the ground after the waves smashed into him. It didn't help much. 

He hit the firm, damp earth with a thud. The air was clean, pure, unadulterated. It was quite a quick distinction from the dank stench of that metallic future. Part of him hoped his being in the past again would upset the future and cause it never to exist. 

A sudden occurrence came to his attention. His left hand was working again. New, invigorating power filled him; he was refreshed, revitalized. The time spent in the time rift jolted his power somewhat and the pain of the travel was now somewhat lost unto him. It was a breezy cool night, with a lofty full moon gazing above, casting all its many shadows and darkness. He was deep in a rich and fertile forest; it was a good feeling. 

"Could it be?" He said aloud to the memory-laden forest. Another wave of self struck him and dropped him to one knee. But he had already felt whole. 

A maniacal laugh broke through the empty sounds of the forest floor. It was his laughter and yet it was not. His legs quaked as they struggled to lift him back up. His scythe had fallen to his side. Fists clenched to solid bricks. 

His hands hammered at his ribs wildly, possessed. Not his hands, but doubles of his hands, mirrors of his hands, ghost images of his hands that would not listen to his commands. One struck him square in the jaw and sent him reeling backwards into the base of the tree. He staggered and tried to gain his bearings. With a fierce and intense concentration he began to fight the ghost images back with his mind. They persisted for a moment, relented, and then the sound and feeling of a great, gusting wind flooded past him and through the surrounding foliage. The mad laughter echoed and finally faded throughout the woods. 

"What the_hell_ was that?" He said aloud, spitting at the ground and noting the small spot of blood in it. More surprises, more annoyance. He snarled at the situation, but the vibrations of the forest had already calmed down, whatever it was had passed. He moved to and picked up his scythe, examining it momentarily. It was a long weapons, just over his height, and it had a long curved blade as well, "It _is_ unnecessarily conspicuous..." 

Soft-toned ancient words elegantly floated from his mouth as his hand and the scythe began to glow minutely. With a quick movement, he struck the handle, cutting it into two parts clean as a knife through warm butter. He grasped the end opposite the blade, which held a long metal spike, and whipped it through the air a dozen times. Each time, the shimmering spike would form a curved blade at one side that would grow and lengthen with the momentum. In the end, he had two uniquely matched twin sickles. 

He nodded to himself with the slight and justified satisfaction like he would have seen as a child when he would finish a drawing or just when sitting in front of a fire petting his kitten. Taking the sickles, he latched them to the middle of his back in a neat "X" and into a loop of the blue cloth around his waist. Another spell stuck them in place. 

He would still need to replace his cape to properly conceal them he thought. If the forest was the one he thought it was, then the Ashtear family was a ways to the north. 

What would she do when she saw him? He was never friendly with any of them really, even her. She was smart, but she was also just as foolish. But he was one of them too, in the end, wasn't he? He continued to stalk out of the forest, keeping ever watchful of everything, fully aware of the scrutinizing eye of the forest. 

There was something missing, was it something important? He didn't feel the same. Why would he think about Lucca and the others? Why would he place himself in their company outside of just to complete his undertaking? Simply put, he was lonely. No, not lonely. How could he be? Were not Slash and Flea his former companions to some degree? No, he thought, they were tools just like all the others. So was that despicable and loathsome Ozzie. Just the thought of that bulbous green and flaking skin made his stomach churn. 

There it was again. Why would he feel the need for Slash and Flea to be his former "companions"? It must have something to do with that ghost, no, not a ghost, something else. Lucca would have given it a long, fancy name...a Temporal Apparition of Irrefutable Subconscious Development & Severance. But what did all that mean? What part of him left just then? Or was it a new part? Something wholly different from him and yet, completely like him. He didn't know. He didn't want to stop to think about it further. 

"Think of_her_, damn it." He said to himself, carefully darting to and from the backs of remarkably mossy trees. He felt as though, if he wanted, he could just pick one of the trees up in both of his arms and toss it aside. They seemed so spongy and soft, even on the sections without as much of the lush, bottle-green moss, "You need to focus damn it. I cannot be defeated."

* * *

It was going to be a long trek before he actually got to his destination. First was the forest, then the bridge, and then he'd have to cut around Guardia & Truce down to the bridge to Ashtear Island. His skills would be tested, as well as his nerves, he knew. That's what it always came down to in the end. 

He imagined himself here, in the kid's future, the Mystics were even more the embittered, loathsomely sad, and far worse, defeated, bunch, could see the dying race of Mystics joining the Humans and relations mending where once pure, unspeakable hatred and resentment stirred at the mere mention of the other race. And unsurprisingly enough, his thoughts weren't far from the truth. 

In the South, Porre was creating a faction with the Mystic Village by way of ferry transportation. Mystics and Humans had been uneasily migrating in-between the two towns for the past twenty years or so. Commerce was up, tourism for both was at an all-time high, and people were learning new things from each culture. It was an amazing time in history. He would hate it all if he actually knew. 

The thought of co-existence had never been a thought in his mind before. The Humans just didn't deserve it and almost everyone knew it in the start. It was Mystic territory from the beginning, all of Guardia & Truce, was theirs before they were driven out like so many other had been before them and a multitude would be after. It was the cycle of the world. All he had done was pick the justified side to fight for. He had seen a vast majority of the dawn of the war, more than anybody really wanted to, and in the end, he didn't really care for either side. It was all frivolous to him anyhow. 

Change was coming; _The Wind_ was blowing strong again. He took the Amulet from his sack and looked at it for what must have been the millionth time since the separation. It brought back burnt red memories of his life, embers of a past slowly turning to fragile ash. His sister Schala, his only friend Alfador, his mother-the Queen, his father-the King, the false Queen that took hi smother's place, the Mystics, the Humans, the War, that stupid, gutless frog, the bullheaded, order-driven knight, the kid & his friends, those enlightened "gurus". 

It was a flood; hundreds of names blurred and etched into him memory. Not even a handful of them were even _his_ acquaintances. Only a couple he would call his friends. He was born the solitary life of the noble, though he hadn't lived his productive years that way. Those years had been hard and merciless in their training for him to be more effective in achieving his one, ultimate goal in life. He was taken and he was hardened to long-smelted, galvanized steel. A warrior became of him, a wizard, a lone wolf, chasing the moon. 

Nameless faces coming and going in and out of his life in a seemingly limitless cycle of pain and suffering. Was there an end to be had of all this? He had a reason, yes, but what of the rest of it? He walked on swiftly in his present, knowing his past, and foreseeing his cloudy future. What was he willing to do? What was he willing to give up? 

Strange thoughts on this pale summer's night in Fiona's Forest...

* * *

It was a nice place, she thought. Not quite the grandiose 'temple' she had been told of. It was a simple cathedral building. High architecture, flying buttresses, heavenly and obvious religious over-tones all well maintained white and wooden decor. The sounds of a wolf's howling came in from afar in the darkened night. What she was looking for though, wasn't here. She didn't necessarily expect it to be, had begun losing hope. 

Her long, lemon-blonde hair was wrapped up on her head in covered buns at each side. The candle-light at the head of the chapel flickered in her curiously attentive azure-colored eyes. She watched the nuns go about their daily (and nightly) chores, so neat, so orderly and routine, like all of them she'd ever seen before. When she found a temple or church, she would stop and pray, but it seemed like the whole world was deteriorating before her. Not just society as a whole, but nature as well. Something was swelling up in the world deep down, she could feel it. 

She sighed soft, but long. All of fourteen now, she still hadn't found what she was looking for. So much had been given up just at the beginning and so little had changed. Another, smaller sigh came out of her as she picked up an unlit candle with her left hand and dipped its wick into the flame of another. 

"Not many travelers, 'specially not ones so young, in this part anymore." One of the nuns said to her, coming up from behind her right side, "These candles are lit mainly by we nuns here now. In some ways it's good to know that no one's in need of 'em, but in other ways, we see it as people simply losing faith." 

She held the lit candle in her small, clutching left hand. A tear almost escaped her. 

"I'm so sorry, I should not be intruding." The nun turned to leave. 

"It's for my brother." She said rather unexpectedly. She had never shared anything with any of the previous inquisitive nuns or church-hands. But they had all been less elusive about it; had asked it flat out, "I'm looking for him." 

"I'm sorry. To lose a sibling is a hard thing to do." 

"Where is God for these times, good sister?" She said, looking down into the flame's white eye. A bead of wax formed and trickled its way down to kiss her hand. 

"God is always there, within us all. His plans are not always for us to understand." The sister took on a look of mixed shame and anguish at a buried memory suddenly surfacing again and she grasped for her subtle mask of happiness and relentless joy, "Sadly, everything that has form must eventually fade away...Such is life." 

Looking back at the nun, she smiled and was about to say something along the lines of, "Are you nuns always so depressing?" This smile was wiped clean from her face. A look of mute dread replaced it and the only words that managed to escape her mouth were, "_Oh, my god!_" 

The intricate stain glass windows shatters like so many soft eggs smashed into brick walls. The large, oak door began to creak, cringe and splinter with the outside weight. Large Wolfs heads protruded from the now windowless openings. There were easily a dozen, but they _saw_ hundreds.

* * *

He counted fifteen; a very large pack. They made their move towards the openings. Should he intervene? He didn't have any reason to. At least, he didn't think so. These problems with time were kind of confusing. Was he being manipulated to help this cathedral? No, too far-fetched. 

But he was a long way from the nearest town, named Porre, which he was going to avoid and it was out of his way anyways. This chapel was a regular rest stop for people going to and from Guardia & Truce and Porre. It was also where they had reunited with the old Prometheus chip, which had at the time inhabited the circuit-driven iron hide known as Robo, serial number R66-Y. 

It seemed almost too right for him to do. He stood there, in the total darkness of the tree up until the first of the Wolfs managed to break in. Then he started his spell.

* * *

The Wolfs just piled on top of each other, not caring for the ones beneath; the first Wolfs to smash the windows were also the first Wolfs to be trampled over to get inside. They were the first Wolfs to have their innards meet the sharp glass still spearing out from the bottom framework of the windows. They jerked and convulsed under the pressure of the others. 

Wolfs don't need to be careful though. It's not hardwired into their nature to be so because they heal rapidly, especially so during the full moon. No one really knows any good ways to get rid of them. They're unstoppable.

* * *

"C'mon then!" She said, taunting the Wolfs. This was going to be the final battle. Here, in this chapel, with the nuns cowering behind the main area and Wolfs bearing down on her. It if was to come down to this, then she'd have to give it her all. Nothing so far had gotten her down-except time-and nothing was going to keep her down. She absorbed the moment in a heartbeat and became one with her emotions, "I won't be stopped here, so soon (outside of the moment, the words would have resounded in her mind with a dull aching) in my search. I _hate_ you and you _will_ die." 

The pleats of her light-colored skirt flittered behind her as she swooped through the aisle of pews. The flames of the candle lighting around the cathedral glittered and glimmered on the face of the heavily polished, small, iron shield covering her left forearm. The sight stopped those Wolfs who had begun to climb in over the bodies of the first Wolfs for just a moment. A loud burst of a howl escaped each of the Wolf's large, gaping mouths. Bubbly, rabid saliva drooled out as they stared down the young girl with a horrible hunger in their eyes. 

"Miss, you mustn't! There's nothing you can do!" The nun she had spoken to pleaded from the back of the room. 

"Die fighting, good sis'." She replied, not turning, lifting her smallish, gloved hands, clenched in fists. A thick, denadorite spike stuck out at each gloved knuckle, "Die fighting..." 

Wolfs leapt with claws bore. Fists blurred, pews shattered, blood sprayed and two Wolfs were knocked down, but not out. They each limped off to the side, in-between shards of wood. Both had their faces turned into messes of concaved bloody and broken bones. 

She was drenched in their blood: her face, her fists & her hair, the armor covering her dress, her pleated skirt, and even a multitude of tiny spatters running down her legs; a film of dark red Wolf's blood. Her shield took a little beating, but was still in good condition. She readied it, holding it up along with her other fist. 

A bloody angel with no more shimmering, no more glimmer, no shine, no glitter, no more heavily polished, sparkle dances, just blood, until it hit.

* * *

An inferno of flickering flames scorched all the Wolfs from the outside. Hideous screeches of pain echoed in the forest night. Bursts of great scarlet fire bubbled in through the window openings and singed the hair of the two standing, bewildered Wolfs. A man crashed through the remaining, smoldering glass of the middle window, no, not just crashed, but he seemed to fly. 

The shimmer was back. Though it wasn't held within any of the girl's objects, not even her eyes so much as twinkled. The candles had blown out with the explosion of flame coming from the outside. Moonlight poured in through the various new openings. It wasn't the moonlight either though. They glowed with a power of their own. Two brightly radiant new moons, one each held at attention in his hands. 

The Wolfs had never seen anything like it. The girl had never seen anything like it. Not even the nuns in the back knew what was really happening. It was some kind of skill, but it was the kind of ancient or newly discovered skill none of them had ever seen. The two Wolfs that had ducked out earlier had now revived and were standing at the other Wolfs' sides. None of the other Wolfs moved; they were burnt and dead. 

"Howwwwwww?" One of them bellowed and the word transformed into a long, angry howl. The girl was too stunned to move, the nuns had been already, far before her. Two Wolfs pounced at him. Flickers of the glowing light traced patterns into their skulls, their arms, and up their torsos. They toppled over in heaps of mangled flesh and severed intestine. 

"Magically endowed mythril." The man replied as if it were the simplest and most obvious thing in the world. The sickles weren't tarnished at all, in fact, they seemed to pulsate and grow brighter. _How else do you take care of Wolfs?_ He thought numbly to himself. 

The last two looked at each other and began leaping over pews and throwing them back wildly at the entrance, at the man. He ducked and dodged their attempts to stop him.

* * *

"Stop, or the sister diessss." One of the Wolfs said. Its voice was slithering into that of a snake. It was regressing. A great clawed hand was stuck at the sister's throat. The Wolf's big eyes bulged with intensity as it struggled with its form, finally getting it back under control. The other Wolf held a nun in a similar manner. Beads of blood began at the sisters' necks, tears flowed down their cheeks like waterfalls, and their hands were clasped together in prayer.

He almost smiled at the attempt to persuade him to let them live by threatening the life of another. One he did not know and did not care about at that. Who did these silly Wolfs think he was? Of course, even in his former life, he had to cut the Wolfs down to size for their sheer stupidity. History, it seems, was repeating itself once again. What a fool he was to think of defying it.

The lone girl, dripping with blood, stood trembling between him and the Wolfs. He moved swiftly past her; much too swiftly, faster than a man _could_ move. He was somewhere behind her in a dark flash, an instant. His eyes flared and they saw the death awaiting them there.

His arms rose, as if pleading for them to stop. The hands were empty; his gaze was hard, brutal cold. The Wolfs' eyes rolled up into their heads. The great silver of the mythril sickles still glowed ever brighter and pulsated, spiking out, one each, of their foreheads.

Crimson smears of blood and gristly bits of brain spatter both nuns, each shining spike of the sickles coming within an inch of their faces. He had made no attempt to spare them, it was just how the cards were dealt, how the darts landed, how the sickles cut.

* * *

**_How ironic that, having been drawn into yet another portal, I would end up..._**

* * *


	4. Chapter 04, Exchanged Names

** 1025 A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 4-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES**  
**CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "EXCHANGED NAMES"**

The little fire cast many shadows in the late of the night. Its flame seemed to switch from blue to green and back again, going almost unnoticed. The shadows filled his face, consumed his form. She wondered a lot about him, but none of the questions she had came to her. Ones that did didn't seem appropriate. She didn't know what kinds of questions were appropriate at the time. What could she say? How would she have to say it? 

"Where are you headed?" He asked her, popping her thought balloon and snapping her back into the moment.

* * *

She had stood there, just as stunned (and bloody) as the nuns. With his hands still up, he walked toward the impaled Wolfs' bodies. With a flick of his wrists, the two sickles were back in his hands, and, just as quickly, behind him, at the small of his back. They still pulsated, but the light was fading, dying out. It was still dark out, and the moon had begun to set. 

His right hand raised and the candles of the little church sprung to life again, as if nothing had happened. The only difference was that there were now two more candles lit for mourning and, of course, the broken windows and the door, bursting inwards. He assessed the church, the damage, the lone standing pedestal of holy water near the entrance, the large pipe-organ in the corner, the nuns, the bodies, and lastly, the girl. What was the point? He could only think that this ultimately changed the future and that made him somewhat pleased. 

He turned and went for the door. There was nothing for him there. 

"Wait!" The girl asked in what she thought was a shout, but as it turned out was more of a heavy squeak. He didn't turn and he didn't stop. 

"It's dark. This church has lost its appeal as a place of safe haven." He said, opening the door and before stepping out, he paused, "I must set up a camp and make a fire."

* * *

She must have stood there, dumbfounded at the entire sequence of events of the past four or five minutes (_could it have been such a short time?_ she thought) before actually doing anything. The nuns were shifting now, finally getting their bearings. Two of them wandered into a back room that was added on five years ago when traffic was at its peak. One collapsed to her knees before getting there, the other fell face first onto one of the beds. The other two wondered and pondered over the bodies of the Wolfs. How would they get rid of so many bodies? Who did they report this to? And more importantly: what role did God have in this and what purpose could it have? Was that man their heavenly savior, or something else, something far more sinister? 

She bolted to the door, at the last minute stopping at the pedestal of holy water to splash and scrub off some of the blood. Her skirt remained stained and flecks of dried blood entangled her hair. She opened the door and in came the dead body of a large Wolf, thudding dully on the hard floor of the inner church and making her jump back before stepping over it warily, cautiously. 

No backward glances at the distraught nuns or the face of the church lying in rubble. She had a singular goal. This man could help her. This man had the answers. She knew it instinctively and without question. This man would help her finish her quest. There was no doubt and she was right.

* * *

"W-what?" She asked, suddenly back in the present, getting used to her own tongue all over again. He seemed annoyed, but went on anyways. 

"I _said_, 'where are you headed?'." 

"Oh! Yes, right, I'm..." She thought about apologizing, but it didn't seem right, it wasn't what he wanted. She got the feeling that an apology would just make him more annoyed, "I'm heading to the festival." 

"The-the Millennial Fair?" He wondered where in time Prometheus had truly sent him. 

"No, of course not. Why would you say that?" She asked. She was too young-she would have only been four at the time-to remember the Millennial Fair held in Truce, and she hadn't been around fairs much in her youth, "I'm headed for the United Festival." 

"United Festival...?" He asked. His stomach was already churning. The Millennial Fair had been a test of wills for him to endure before; another such experience would be too much to bear, "For what occasion is this 'United Festival' being held?" 

She looked at him inquisitively for the briefest moment before answering, "The factions of Guardia, Porre & the Mystics, of course." 

"Of course..." He said. 

"Although I'm not going to enjoy the festivities." 

"Oh?" He didn't know if he wanted to know, but he decided to humor the girl for giving him information that may prove valuable in the future, "Then why are you going?" 

"I'm looking for my brother." She said, looking deep into the fire. His brow line rose at this. It was too coincidental, too similar, and too obvious. He too looked into the flame which he had created magically moments before. Before the girl had come up and proper herself at the opposite side, sitting cross-legged. He knew she would come. He saw it with the eye of _The Wind_. 

"You truly hope to find your brother there?" He said, almost with a mask of condescension. 

"Yes, it's a large grouping of many people. It's my best hope for finding him...or someone who knows how to find him..." She said. He looked into her great, sparkling sapphire eyes; those eyes that didn't look up from the fire. The discussion was personal for both of them, it was getting uncomfortable, "My-my name is Marcy; I'd like to thank you sincerely for saving me-and the nuns-back there." 

He nodded at this. It seemed to her that he was going to give her his name. She hadn't expected him to, but the pause after his nod seemed to extend and accentuate her thoughts. Was she welcome here? Here beside his fire? Here in the same forest? Here in this unreasonably uncomfortable moment in time? 

His eyes never left her own. Hers were gazing around rapidly, looking for something; a way out? Was she afraid of him? Were people so automatically afraid of him? She bit her lip and scratched at her nose. She wasn't afraid of him. She was just uncomfortable with his lack of response. 

It was only a moment, but she still felt it, and he had come to realize it, "My name is Ma...Gil. You can call me Gil." He thought for another moment and added, "You are welcome for the assistance with the Wolfs, but you didn't have a chance against them." 

She was happy to know he had a name and that he had told her it. His last comment seemed abrasive, but it wasn't intended, "We would have died in there. So I stood up to fight." 

"Die fighting, hmm?" He stated more than asked. 

"Well, yes, exactly." She said, looking up fro the fire with an excessive blinking of her eyes as if waking from a dream. 

"I've known people who live by that same code." 

"You-you didn't know about the Festival, where are you headed?" 

She thought better of asking where he was from. Something about him, his light blue hair, his weapons, his pale, hardened skin, and even his voice all said to her, 'you don't want to know little doe, just know I come from _harder times'_. This was not far from the truth at all. 

"I search for a scientific mind." He said, not wishing to give all the details, if not necessary. 

"The Ashtears perhaps?" She asked, finding a stick and poking it into the core of the flame, "They're supposed to be at the head of the major techno revolution. There's supposed to be next to nothing the great Lucca can't do." 

"That's good to hear." Gil said. The connections were adding up, but it was too soon to tell. He hadn't meant for this moment to sound like it did fortunately enough. He was simply thinking how it must be to be so recognized as Lucca at this point in her life. Again, he was drifting back to them as if they were childhood friends. He risked it, "I heard she hasn't been as active recently though." 

"Huh?" She was popped out of another realm of dream, one of sheer surprise, "Uh, actually, I think you're right. She's getting older now, though. I don't think she's even married yet. I wonder where all that talent's going to go after her." 

"I'm sure she has understudies or the like." He said. His chance had paid off. It seemed that she _had_ been slowing down and getting old. What Prometheus said about her Time Egg could be true. Gil's face showed obvious dissatisfaction. 

"So then, you hope to find one of those understudies I take it?" Marcy asked him after he shook off his thoughts. 

"Yes, that's what I have planned exactly, if Lucca cannot help me." He said with all honesty, but had doubts about whether or not he should approach Lucca at all. Perhaps a raid was in order, he thought to himself with a cynical sort of pleasure. Would she allow him to use it if she thought it wouldn't work? This lead to the question of whether or not she knew if it worked, perhaps only Prometheus knew. 

"What need?" She asked inquisitively. 

"Need?" He asked, searching the recent conversation, "Oh, I-I too am looking for...for someone I lost." 

"What?" She had never come across anyone with a similar goal in her entire life, "You're kidding." 

"About this, I never kid." The statement would have made him laugh. He thought briefly of his sister, "It happened long ago, I was much younger than even you." 

"Wow. My brother...I lost him when I was too young to remember much." She said, the story needed to be told, and this was her chance to tell it, "I just remember a large, dark silhouette taking him and the heavy smell of burning tobacco. I remember screaming loudly. I've found out that the man I seek wears a patch over one eye." 

"So which do you think you'll find first? Your brother or the man with the patch over one eye?" He said, knowing exactly what she wanted, "Which do you _want_ to find first?" 

"My brother of course!" She said, surprising him at first. Then she paused, lowered her head, shadows swallowed her eyes, "Sometimes though, all I'd like is just _one_ crack at that bastard. Just _once_, right across the cheek." 

She grinded a knuckle into the dirt beside her and he understood: It _was_ too coincidental. He would have to do something about it, he knew, "I'm going to turn in." 

"Yes, okay." She said meekly, wanting to ask about his amazing ability, but it still didn't seem like the proper time. Tomorrow would be her chance. He rounded a great tree and sat at its base. She laid herself down by the fire, warming herself, and drifted off into sleep.

* * *

A great deep white mist rolled into the forest, engulfing everything, smothering the fire. The forest fell back; Gil was now inside Lavos' core again. He could hear it breathing all around him; in and out in large, sucking gasps. There was a great white light coming from the center of the shell. A blue flash shocked him, pulsating in surges of brilliant, blinding light. 

_A dream_

He was on his side' his face covered in deep cuts and marks, one eye was bleeding and battered shut. Blood trickled from his lip. He was screaming something, blood spattering out his mouth in all directions. There was furious and panicked anger swelling across his face. His arm flashed forward, trying desperately... 

_Just a dream_

* * *

The birds twittered, both in her sleepy mind an din the waking forest. She was still deep and sound asleep. Dreaming a dream she had dreamt for many of the lost years of her own youth: her brother was dead. She finally found him and he was dead. The man with the eye patch was nowhere to be seen. 

_A dream_

Her focus shifted. She was stalking the man, hunting the man. Her own eye was adorned with an eye patch now. Her bright dress darkened to black as she swept through sleepy little villages and wet shingled rooftops, wide open grassy fields and sandy deserts, windy and rock-strewn mountains, boundless frames of existence. Nothing would stop her. 

_A dream_

Gil blocked her way, stolid and calm. She was a wraith of fury and anger as she beat at his chest, demanding he let her go, but he did nothing but stand there, looking down at her petite little form with a kind of sadness-a kind no one had ever seen him give. She cried in his arms, wishing the dreams away. 

_Just a dream_

* * *

Marcy awoke as if coming up from the deep for a refreshing breath of air. Her dreams had choked her, the Wolfs had jolted her. The fire was long out, nothing but a burnt char in the earth. Someone had mashed dirt into it in the morning. 

The sun had risen hours earlier. She had slept late. Looking around, she noticed that Gil was gone. She circled the tree he had slept against and found nothing but moss and a lot of empty space. She was alone again. She cursed out loud. The tip of the cross atop the church could be seen just barely floating above the trees in the distance. Would he have gone back there? _Of course not_ she thought to herself. 

The fact remained; he ditched her. She didn't know what to think. Why was he being a jerk to her? What was he hiding? Did he know something about her brother? No, it was something else, _something personal_, she knew. 

When she gave herself time to think, she often found that she could find some relatively good answers to the questions she had. Too many people she had talked to always jumped to conclusions before really thinking things out. They acted like children. Even the wisest elders she'd met thought in that same overcomplicating regard. Sometimes she felt the need to pound them into little bits with her fists. She really loved the feeling, she had decided long ago. Fight was in her spirit; it was a part of her.

* * *

He left at dawn, looked down on her smallish figure in the light of the new day and his eyes did a slight smile. She reminded him of better times, when he was just starting out. Ready to be molded into a killing machine bent on vengeance. It was all there. It was practically fate, he thought, slightly amused. With his boot, he kicked some dirt over the dying ashes of the fire.

He floated out of the environs without so much as a single twig snapping or a leaf crunching. The need to say goodbye was not even so much as a drifting thought in some deep corner of his brain. He knew what he was going to do, what had to be done. If this was what it was, then he'd let it, but not until he knew. There were too many important things on the line. Too many whole lives. 

This girl was innocent enough and strong; her destiny was, in effect, his to take. It was he who saved her from the untimely fate which awaited her. In the original timeline, she died, the nuns died, the Wolfs fed and grew and the chapel turned to a decomposing graveyard to passing travelers, never to be entered again, never to be torn down. Perhaps it was this that guided things. There was no _fate_ to be found here, just timelines interweaving with change, rolling with the punches, re-stitching itself whole again, if not with just longer sleeves. 

_The Wind_ was blowing now; _hard_ and _swift_.

* * *

**_Do you hear that sound around you...?_**

* * *


	5. Chapter 05, Tri Zed

** 1025 A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 5-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES**  
**CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "TRI ZED"**

_There are too many people_; the single most prevalent thought on everyone's mind who was celebrating or on the way to the great United Festival. The first steps toward absolute unification had already begun. It was a new millennia and a whole new era for the world. But there were still too many people all getting bunched up next to each other all under the pretense of 'having a good time'. 

Very few Mystics joined in the celebration. Of those that traveled, many were often distracted by other towns and cities and people along the way. Nothing so far in the history of the world had ever happened quite like this. Something was bound to happen, something bad, something very, _very_, bad. 

Every precaution was set though. Guards positioned everywhere imaginable; in and around town, around the castle, the castle entrance, the ferry docks, and even all over Zenan Bridge (both sides and even two lone guards in the center). A couple guards were also dispatched to the Ashtear Bridge & Island. It seemed like nothing could go wrong. But it would.

* * *

He spied the profusion of people-mostly lower class-long before he saw the bridge. Sticking to the forest edge, he could easily avoid the flocks of festival-goers, but he didn't know what to do when he got to the bridge. There was likely to be security of some sort. An explanation might be in order. He didn't think of one, if it was needed, he'd have it by then, or he'd make it up on the spot. He was never one to be jolted by authority. If nothing else, he could always try and go around the bridge somehow. 

The trees were thinning and the people were thickening at the bridge entrance. He could even see pick-pockets discreetly on the make, prostitutes, and phony craftsmen peddling paste jewelry. _This is the future?_ He thought to himself; _such depravity, such filth and excrement._ It was an ugly future to him, and that's all he saw.

* * *

She saw something different; a big mark or possibly another tradesman. Either way, she wanted a part of the action. What was his deal; the lone, standing figure, assessing the crowd? It was obvious that he was on the job. He was a professional like she had never seen-and never would; one that actually went in with a plan. A real "kick-ass-and-forget-the-questions" kind of guy, and she_knew_ it, right then and there. 

What did that mean to her? Well, it could have meant that she finally found a worthy partner, an ally with brains as well as brawn. It could have meant she found a possible love interest (he was handsome enough, in a gritty, pale, bad-boy kind of way). It could have meant a countless number of things. But to a thief, another thief-especially one better than you-is but one thing; just another boob with the goods. 

She smiled her big, goofy smile as she slinked up a ways from behind him, hidden in the forest. There is _nothing_ more attractive to any reputable thief than easy money. That is of course, unless the easy money is far off in the forest all by its lonesome.

* * *

How dare the foolish girl try so haphazardly to sneak up on _him_? It was_absurd_. He hadn't turned around to see her, there really was no need. She didn't seem to notice the copious amount of sound coming from her dreadfully poor sneaking job. The world still held its own little surprises for him, and he still hated it for doing so. 

What did this pitiful excuse for a pick-pocket expect to do? He could even smell her before he heard her noise. She was bad at this, it seemed. It almost made him feel like giving her a handout for the mockery of a performance that she was putting on. 

His brow furrowed in contempt and the kind of slight anger that parents get when their child has broken _another_ glass or plate. How could so many of these daft dullards still be alive? Surely they'd have to die out before they reach any considerable age, right? You'd think they'd be weeded out long ago based on sheer genetics. 

He didn't see it coming; almost didn't have enough time to react. He was thinking too generally; getting lost in semantics. He had let his guard down; living too far out of the moment. 

The long, curved blade weapon flew past him in a flash; he had precious little time to twist to avoid it. The whiz of it cutting the air resounded in his ears as it flew by, coming within mere centimeters of his face. 

Something else though; at his back? Quick, shifting movements, something was..._Stolen_! 

The weapon shimmered and flashed into the trees going steadily upwards. It was circling back from high in the sky, moving towards the girl, now running to the bridge. It was going to be very messy, and he knew it. 

She was a teenage girl, similar in age to Marcy, but a few inches shorter and just a touch thinner. Her long and sharp scarlet hair was tied into two big braids that curved down to her back. She was wearing pumpkin-colored short shorts and a matching tube top; things Gil had never been exposed to in any timeline previous. He was bemused and appalled by the world's downward spiral from fashion and dignity. 

He could see plainly enough-and thusly had no need to check through his things-what she had snatched from him. Clutching it tight, like candy in a greedy babe's hand, she held quite possibly his most prized and cherished of possessions: his Amulet. It was the Amulet his sister had given him and was one of the last solid objects he had that linked him with that past, with her. 

Sudden and furious anger swelled within him. No guards would stop him. She would die most terribly for her impertinence. The utter insolence of it all! She was far from lucky in getting that of all the items in his sack. 

The girl caught the boomerang mid-step and Gil gave chase without further ado. Intense flames burned in his eyes-blind with rage. No, not blinded,_concentrated_, concentrated _rage_. Crowds of people parted like the Red Sea, not for him, but because of him. It was almost as if they could sense a strong wind emanating from him, blowing and directing itself at the girl. They shifted out of the path of this powerful force. If they had not, they would have been trampled by it. People closest were immediately silenced by this shocking look. Others asked quick questions like 'what's going on and 'could someone move so I could see'.

* * *

"Hold it there, missy. What's the rush?" The guard asked, pushing her back a bit while still holding on to her slender, naked shoulders. It was his job to look out for suspicioius people going across the bridge. His partner stood at his side, examining the crowd in-between glances at the girl in her skimpy outfit. 

She had made a move to the bridge in an attempt to lose him in the crowd, but after a quick look back, it seemed as though he didn't get lost in crowds. As she was looking back and running onto the first planks of the bridge, she slammed into the tall and burly guard. He looked like an average Poore sentry; cobalt-blue uniform and a small but high-powered Ashtear-designed pistol (he had a fairly old model) strapped to his hip. 

"What's that ya got there?" His partner asked from over his shoulder. The Amulet had let out a small shine, as if drawing the guards' attention to it. She had her boomerang tucked in the back of her belt, hidden behind her small, open-breast vest. Normal boomerangs are just kids' toys, but anything with a sharpened metal blade would have likely drawn the awareness of the guards. 

"It's_nothing_! You've got to let me past!" She said, on the verge of shouting. She made a few quick glances over her shoulder. In the near distance, she could see large groups of people moving back-and-forth. He was getting closer. There wasn't any time to make up pretty excuses or to flirt with the sentry, "There's a man. He's trying to _kill_ me!" 

The guards shared a quick glance at each other. This was a common line given to them from passing thieves. It was a very _bad_ line, especially when you've got something shiny in your arms and you're acting apprehensive. It had never worked before. She knew this and, funnily enough, what she had said was wholly true, although she wasn't entirely aware of _that_ useful bit of information. 

"Well then, let's wait for him, and see if we can't straighten these things out then, shall we?" The sentry stated like the tediously memorized line that it was. He didn't loosen his grip; in face, he made it firmer. She made a few quick glances at the weapons at their hips again. 

Could she make it? These two guards looked like shmucks. She was sure she could take them out with one or two flips of her rang. That would cause quite the disturbance though. Half-way across the bridge she'd be stopped again. There was no way out. 

She saw the heads parting. Then they stopped People went about their business; moving about, chattering, taking quick glances at her. Her eye focused and unfocused, scanning the crowd, anticipating the confrontation, but it didn't happen. Two or three minutes passed by. 

"Look here, missy, there doesn't seem to be anyone following you." The sentry said, kind of disappointed himself, "So stop wasting our time and go about your business." 

The guards returned to keeping an ever-watchful eye on the swarm of people. She went along with the flow, going towards Guardia across Zenan Bridge. It was more farming area and grassland after that; lots of wide-open space.

* * *

She had taken refuge with troops of some sort; watching out for people exactly like him. He had to stop, didn't want further trouble from Guardian (or whomever) troops. The plan was to see Lucca and _only_ Lucca. He didn't want to see the kid-he was now a prince or some such-or the princess. Dealing with people in that manner, royalty especially, was never his strong suit, ironically enough. 

That didn't' matter though; the guards were mainly looking out for pickpockets, swindlers, and anybody starting a ruckus. To them, he just looked like a weird Mystic or possibly a hermit. But if he tried anything, he had no doubt that they'd be all over him. So he got by unnoticed, for the most part. 

The bridge was a long one, very simplistic, but sturdy in design. He would have to follow her through the crowds over it, with the sun continuing to come up from the east and the wind, helpfully, from the north, breezing straight past him from the other side of the bridge. He could still smell her awful and assaulting perfume lingering in the air. She had stopped for some reason, so he stopped too. 

There were various entertainment acts, clowns, jugglers, 'magicians' and such, floating through the crowds and off to unsettled parts of the bridge. Peddlers were apparently allowed to set up shop directly on the bridge, so there were merchants selling their wares all along it; very _brazen_, _bargaining_ merchants. 

"The finest silk you'll ever get the chance to purchase!" One pleaded. 

"Secret Mystic brew, guaranteed to get you any woman." Another said. 

"We've got an assortment of any kind of woman you need, right here!" One responded. The two instantly got into an argument about whether people wanted to entice women or have them for the night. It was all unsettling to him. He made no attempt to hide the disgust he felt towards them all. 

A loud bellow came from behind Gil. The kind of laughter a father forces out when his boy's made a really bad joke, "Pay no attention to these whore mongers and frauds. They'll do no one no good at all." 

Gil turned to see a large, solid man at a booth filled with weapons of both standard and ornate design, all high quality. It was as obvious from his stature, his clothing, and his dark, fire-burnt skin that he was a smithy. As if you couldn't tell from the great, metal tools that hung from his belt and the goods spread out before him. 

His right eye was nearly a slit and a scar ran across it from the top of his forehead to the side of his cheek. He was a smith who was familiar with his weapons. He was an old man, in his late fifties at least, gradually nearing the end of his rope. A great grin seemed plastered on his face, the deep wrinkles molded around that smile as if it rarely ever left. His hair was short and his beard was neat and trimmed. 

The smithy offered his hand and, seeing as the girl had still not moved, Gil decided to take it, "Name's Zappa, the world's greatest and only_traveling_ blacksmith!" His words were announced in a way that made it so he was actually advertising to anyone within earshot. The grip on Gil's hand was strong, so he pressed back with the same strength. Zappa's grin seemed to heighten and they loosened hands, "Fine grip lad, fine grip. I noticed your weapons..."

* * *

"I AM ZOAH, THE GREAT MAMMOTH, THE GRAND DRAGON, THE DISTINGUISHED DESTRUCTION ZONE, ZOAH THE CHAMPION!" A large-as advertised, true mammoth proportions-man roared. The word "champion" was pronounced in gaudy entertainment fashion as cham-pee-un. He looked like a medieval professional wrestler. 

Zoah's muscular body was patched with random scars, he wore a great, iron mask resembling that of a lancer or dragoon knight that hid his face, and he also wore a wrestler's grotesque mini-brief thong underwear. From his belt hung a short-length of cloth that covered from the top side of one leg, around his backside, and along his side to the top of his other leg, resembling a three-quarter skirt. 

"I NEED A VOLUNTEER!" He bellowed to the crowd in front of her, stopping her in her tracks. She-as loud as Zoah seemed to be-didn't hear him. Her mind was trapped in her own, frightened, escapist world. _Get away. Get away. Get away as fast as you can._ She managed to push past the blockade of people, "THANK YOU, GOOD GIRL! WILL ONLY BE A MOMENT!" 

He burst into a great laughter as he took her-startled out of her trance-in his large hands. She had stepped forward, involuntarily volunteering. 

She had only seconds to grasp the concept of what he was doing to her. He placed her onto a simple padded mat, lying on her back, and then placed a short table over her mid-section. 

"What the devil...?" She asked in a small voice-very small in comparison to Zoah. Three enormous squares of rock asphalt were placed atop the table at her waist. He walked out several dozen steps before turning back to her. 

"PLEASE MISS! TRY NOT TO MOVE!" He shouted the words extra loud as if the short distance would have made it hard to hear him. If they could have seen his lips, they would have seen a great smile across them at his own words, "NOW, FOR THE FAMOUS GYRONIMO!" 

The words were pronounced fay-me-us and gee-ronee-moe. He took to a run, vaulted twenty feet straight up into the air, spun, and came down with a diving fist, which stopped a foot short above the rock. 

He stood there frozen as the crowds assessed this. They wondered if he had failed and was just in a state of shock or shame or if...The rocks split and crumbled beneath the blow even without physical contact. Below the pile of crumbled rock, the table itself was perfectly intact. Zoah let out a laugh as his audience-for they were now his audience and they would all follow him onward toward the fair, they had decided-clapped and let out their gasps of awe. Later in their lives they would tell of the remarkable feet they saw on Zenan Bridge during the United Festival by the man who disappeared. 

Zoah helped the girl up to her feet and patted a bit of the dust from her front. 

She was in a very odd place, still piecing things together: the theft, the chase, the crowds & how they stepped aside for him, the guards stopping her, and just then, the loud man. It fit somehow, she knew. Somehow it all fit and she'd be alright if she could just figure it all out quickly enough. 

"BEEN A GREAT HELP TO ME LASS, THANKIE-SAI!" He chuckled to himself. Maybe this was it, she thought. 

"You've gotta help me!" The panic in her veins struck her again, she could make out the crowds moving to make way again, further down the bridge from where she came from, "There's a man back there who's after me!"

* * *

Gil's talk with Zappa had been useful. He learned a few things about the United Fair, happenings of Guardia & Porre, and most importantly, about Lucca Ashtear. She was supposed to have a new exhibit at the fair, a whole tent to herself actually, taking the place of her old feline robotic fight trainer, Gato-now turned house nanny for the kids.

It was supposed to be something advanced, as always. Something about the mechanics of spectral dynamos or something, Zappa, while big on smithing, was not as interested in the other sciences. It was easy for Gil to get what he wanted from the smithy though, in exactly the right metal. It was well worth the seven thousand, nine hundred and eighty Gold, which he had to transfer from Zenny.

Gil picked up her trail. There was no way she was going to just stop him up there of all places just by standing still, or whatever the damn hell she was doing. He couldn't let her ditch his Amulet (although he didn't think she would, not really). It simply meant too much to him. There was a disappointed-looking crowd gathered around a little mat with broken rocks on the top of a little table. She had be there, right there, on that mat and she was doing something.

"I don't think it was real. _Could_ it have been real?"

"My word, the way that Zoah man did that, _amazing_!"

"That little **red-haired** girl didn't look as if she knew what she was gettin' herself into."

He had stopped, closed his eyes, and was listening to the laughter and gossip-the mindless white noise-of the crowd around the mat. She was part of a demonstration; some kind of strong man act. Now she was gone, but (more importantly?) so was the strong man. A quick pulse of irritation skipped across his left upper lip to the side of his nose.

People mashed and pushed around him now. _There are too many people._ He thought to himself. _Shortly, at least, there will be one less._

* * *

**_...this world is populated by cretins..._**

* * *


	6. Chapter 06, Flame to Moth

** 1025 A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 6-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES**  
**CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "FLAME TO MOTH"**

The sun blazed in the sky like a great, looming bird, ready to pick and char anyone out in the light. A vast and voracious vulture tending to the dead as best it knows how. Parched throats, sweat-saturated pits, dry and burnt skin were all commonplace that day. People were on the move under that huge and hideous scorcher of a star. They didn't think they were fleeing it, but they inevitably were; seeking shelter from a burning fireball in the sky. 

Gil didn't mind it much. He had been closer to the flaming fiend than any of these people walking to and fro around him, with him, could-or would-ever know. The heat never bothered him, especially not after the arduous and tedious work with the Mystics. They too had to flee, when the invasion hit its peak. Their cities in ruin, they had to rebuild. The heat was more intense, no matter how thick the encircling of forest was; you could just feel differences like that no matter how prepared you were.

* * *

People had accused him of being slow, dimwitted, and downright stupid before. Never, of course, right to his face-his helmet, anyways. But he knew for a fact what the little miss held in her possession. If it was something to do with battle in any ways, he would know. Zoah was no bumbling greenhorn to the goings on science and magics. It was obviously some magical device, whether or not _she_ knew it, was another matter all together. 

"MISS, WHAT KIND OF TROUBLE, EXACTLY, HAVE YOU GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO?" Zoah asked, cutting to the heart of the matter. He had told her he would follow her as far as the Guardia/Truce boarder, but no further. Some of his minor things were left back on the bridge (nothing, he thought, that anyone would want to steal, but you can never tell for certain), and he'd need them for his show at the actual fair. 

They had left the bridge, the red-haired girl towing him by his right hand like any giddy child holding their Pa's hand, anxiously awaiting the fair festivities. But, of course, with a few differences; she was no child, he was no Pa, and the look on her face wasn't that of anticipation, but that of pure and unbridled _fear_. It was a founded fear and on some base level, deep in her heart, she knew it. 

"MISS...?" Zoah shouted past her thought bubbles, popping them out of her present thought, but not out of her mind completely. 

"Hush!" She said, "Do you always speak so loudly?" 

"BUT MISS, I MUST, THE HELM-" He was explaining before she cut him off. 

"Oh forget it! I don't care." She said, hurrying along the path of the road, "He's going to catch up soon, I can feel it." 

"THAT WHOSE MEDALION YOU POSSESS?" 

"Yes, I took it from him." She said, looking deeply into the shimmer of the metal Amulet. 

"WHY NOT GIVE IT BACK?" 

"There's no going back now. I know it. I saw it in his eyes." The girl said. Her eyes were trembling on the edge of kid-like tears. It would not be the first time in her life that she had cried so. She remembered long days of scratching at papers with colored wax as a child, crying just like she felt like crying now, "He's some kind of ghost or demon. And now I've damned myself. Damned because I'm a thief and I can't help it." 

"EVER THE WORDS OF A DYING THEIF..." Zoah said with no real emotion showing. He was just stating it as you would state the hour of the day or your given name. It was not the first time he had seen tears like hers. It was not the first time he had heard words like hers and it was not the first time he spoke his next words, "I AM ZOAH. AND I WILL HELP YOU." 

She looked at him apprehensively. On the bridge, in that moment back there, he looked so strong. Looking back further though, to the dead-white skinned man, he seemed like a powerless little boy, "Thank you." The girl managed in a squeaky little voice. She didn't believe he would be of much good when it came down to it, but he was as good a chance as she was going to get, "My name's Mel. I'm sorry about this; I think that maybe you should just go back though. I don't think you can help me now." 

"TOO LATE FOR THAT, LASS..." He laughed at her remark and how she had already started off without him. He began to walk towards her and shouted, "I KNOW TOO MUCH NOW. IT WOULDN'T BE PROPER OF ME, THEIF OR NO." 

"Then you'll _both_ die." A mysterious-almost raspy-and emanating voice said just loud enough for the two of them to hear. They hadn't noticed, but somehow the people, the crowds, everyone was gone. They had gotten too far ahead, much too far. The people at the bridge were not the first of the day, but they came in intervals: sometimes short, sometimes long. This time, it was a very long break between and they were very far ahead.

* * *

There was an explosion the likes of which few had ever known coming from ahead on the trail. A large billow of dust, murk and black smoke rose into the air. Powder kegs out so far from the kingdoms? It didn't make sense. One girl in particular-now running full speed off of the bridge-knew what it was. It was a bomb. Although not your average gunpowder keg bomb; it was a bomb of pure darkness. 

She came upon the scene just in time to see him, he had called himself Gil (although she had taken it for the false name that it was), heading towards a girl with red braids. As he approached, the girl shrieked, ran, and groped for something at her back. 

"Watch out!" The girl who had just arrived shouted. He didn't notice her. He couldn't notice her. He was swimming in his own thoughts. His mind was a slate of pure, cold steel. He reminded her of the Wolfs, with their hungry, greedy looks. 

The other girl produced a large, curved blade and threw it, hard, at the man with anger in his eyes matching the intensity of the overhanging sun. His hand flashed up at the blade and he caught it. The blade sunk into the leather of his glove, but he kept coming at her. The blade was held firm in his hand; he was gripping it even as it was shredding his glove. 

There was no pain. There was only anger. The girl-Mel was her name, he had heard-had fallen onto her ass as soon as she let go of the boomerang. She was cowering and scampering off backwards more as a natural reaction than of actual fear, knowing there was no getting away. He spoke words that she didn't, and couldn't, really hear. All the fear was gone just then, in its place, a fiery realization.

* * *

He had already started the magic words for the Dark Bomb before he spoke to them. His single finger touched the man's metal helm before he could get another word out. Then, the blackness engulfed him, swallowed them both. She had started off beforehand and at his voice she stammered a moment and fled almost immediately. It wasn't a very large explosion, but by gods, the sound of it. It was the most unnatural noise she had ever heard; spiritual or electrical whines like thunder and yet not at all like thunder. The girl looked back, over her shoulder, and watched in voiceless terror as the blackness ate and ate and ate.

It was a ball of black light at first; it made a meal of Zoah's head as it spread down and outwards. The man too was overcome by the energy, but it was different, he wasn't being erased, it seemed to pass over him like a shadow. The Dark Bomb created a small dome around them (only it wasn't _them_ anymore, it was just _him_) and then it vanished. The man was there and that fire lit in his eyes as he saw her, still clutching his Amulet and reaching for her boomerang behind her, just as he knew she would.

He heard a familiar voice scream at him-or for him-someplace off in the distance. He didn't look back, couldn't look back. His mind was a sharp needle of concentration and rage, long practiced, long harnessed, and forever known to him. He raised Mel's boomerang above his head-he didn't notice when he had caught it, it just seemed to have appeared in his hand-and it glistened in the rays of the sun; flares of light danced along its silvery surface.

"Young moths playing with fire burn..." He had said aloud, not really to her, or even himself, just another plain statement of face as boring as the weather.

* * *

**_...Shall we burn it?_**

* * *


	7. Chapter 07, Cutting Clear of Clouds

** 1025A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 7-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES** **  
CODE - "MAGNESS"**  
**CODE EX. - "CUTTING CLEAR OF CLOUDS"**

He was right; it _was_ messy, _very_ messy. He looked like Marcy had after her attempted fight with the Wolfs. The boomerang still clutched in his soaking scarlet hand as if both had been thrust in a sloppy bucket of paint. The rage and anger left him almost immediately after the Amulet fell from the petite corpse's hand back into his own. It had actually begun to dissipate before, when he saw her cowering down there on the ground. There was a change-a shift-that he had felt; something..._else_. 

After shouting, "Watch out!" to Gil, more in surprise or reactive impulse than in any kind of care or concern for his safety, Marcy had stood there, transfixed on the entire situation. She didn't really think he needed anyone to watch his back. His skill, his precision, _he_ himself was a sight of horrific amazement. He had actually managed not only to catch it, but it didn't seem to hurt him at all. None of the fresh blood-for there _was_ some dried dabs of flakes on his palm from when he entered this era-covering his hand and the weapon was his own. 

He was a warrior with the heart for killing like that of a demon born from brimstone and flame. He was a vicious spirit sent up from hell. He was the archangel falling from the heavens. For one reason or another, this magic man was let loose upon the world as she knew it. Then it ended, the haze cleared, and he was her mysterious savior once again. Her eyes did not convey fear; they sparkled with an awe the likes of which he had never seen before. This is peculiar because he _would_ have seen it, had he a mirror handy as a child, watching his sister work her magics in a brilliantly lit section of their home; their great palace in the sky. 

"My god, what magic." The words formed thoughtlessly from Marcy's astounded lips. She no more knew the words on her tongue than she knew the man standing before her, splashed in the blood and bits of brain of a girl not less than a year younger then herself.

* * *

"We've got him." The first officer said aloud to his subordinates, sitting at various control panels around the small room, filled with various machines and computational devices, "We've got some major temporal flux going down; both sometime mid-summer. It's...it's during the United Fair." 

"Sir...?" One of them asked. The thick Plexiglas windows flared with their regular irregular blue flashing light. 

"This could be very big shit." He replied, "There have already been several deaths." 

"Prevented or prompted?" Another asked. The first officer looked at him with a grave look spread on his face. The monitor in front of him glared and flashed striking red with bold numbers and words representing temporal dates and the effects of the alterations. 

"Both..."

* * *

He ran and she followed him. There was no alternative. He had drawn too much attention to himself already. The guards at the bridge would not be long after Marcy. Add on to that the fact that he was close to drained. Over the course of his travels so far he had expended the energy the temporal rift had imbued him with. 

He was on her level, if not a few inches above her in relative height, as they fled. 

He had not the energy to even float which always seemed to come so effortlessly before. 

"Where do you come from?" She finally said between quick intakes of fresh air. The sun, glimmering and shining through her hair, drew his eye to her. Great blond strands had broken free of her buns and trailed behind her as they ran; whipping back and forth in her motions. Aside from seeing her before, with the Wolfs, this was an image he would not soon forget. 

"Why do you ask this of me _now_?" Gil almost spat the words out. His own fair blue hair whisked behind him in one long great swirl. 

"You _must_ give me _some_ answers." She pleaded, "I _need_ to know." 

"It's..." He searched for the words in his mind like a bat in the night. His eyes glanced up for a quick moment as if he saw something-expected to see something-there, but there was naught but the ever dazzling cerulean skies of the early summer afternoon, "It's..._complicated_." 

He understood her position now. He had answers. She had questions. It is the very essence of youth to ask these questions and to seek knowledge in whatever form. But she was also looking for something else. She was looking for something he was very accustomed to and that he knew so well, that there was nothing but a whisper coating of ice between _all_ of his memories-dearest and cheapest-and it; _vengeance_. 

"We have to find someplace to go for the day." Gil at last said aloud, "Someplace no one will look for us and where no one will find us."

* * *

The sun, now beginning its decline into the western sea, flickered in and out of existence between the trees. The brightness carved not just shadows into the ground, but deep holes in reality where everything within was lost in forever black. The light was so luridly light and the dark so dazzlingly dark that each iris would flicker, refocusing going into one and exiting the other. It was a strobe of serene summer sunlight. 

There was a palpable stench of decay festering in the air. A large crowd of luscious leaves was spread throughout an encompassing tree; standing out in the middle of the wreck like some ancient signal, there to draw the eye. There were two semi-crumbling walls about it; one at the right and one behind. Dirt and grass littered the surrounding grounds. Their traveling boots, both trail-worn, kicked long settled dust into large clouds that enveloped their knees. Anything that might have resembled a floor of any kind had long eroded to earthen ground. 

To the sides of this ancient building were seemingly random markers placed in the ground. Most were just sticks jutting in all directions, some toppled over and others seemed to have caught their drunken friends. Others were of great stones and some old pictograms that reminded them both of long-faded family crests. There were one or two more obvious ones though, that would have told almost anyone what they were. They were sticks too, but theirs also held onto their old horizontal line of vine-twine and wood; their cross. 

Marcy went about these, wondering who they were and when they were buried. As far as she knew, no one had ever seen these. She had never known this was here. It was a moldering mausoleum out in these western woods where no animals lurked and no birds sang. Her hand went out to them as her heart sank with wonderment and an all engrossing sense of confusion. 

He paid them-the graves, or _her_ for that matter-no current attention though. His interest lay within the great tree standing tall in the middle of this ruin. His gloved hand stroked the bark of the tree. Through the cuts left from his nails cutting into the leather when he traveled to this time, the cut left from the 'rang, something else hard and rough under one of his gloves, and even past the long dried blood-some his, some the girls-covering his hand, it felt very rough and real. 

There were six letters forming two conglomerations of nonsensical words and other marks struck into the tree that he didn't quite understand; a lower-case "e", an upper-case "N" followed by another "n" (this one lower-cased), a vertical cutting slash, a gnarled knot in the tree, another lower "e", an "F", and a lower "f", another slash going up and down, and then another lump of a knot. The slashes were deep and the knots protruded about an inch or so. It was all very deliberate and seemed somewhat important to him, but he couldn't think why exactly. 

"What...is this place?" The words finally managed to choke out of her dry throat. 

"It is a long forgotten place." He said with a slightly displeased sigh, "Once known simply as 'The Cathedral'." 

"The _Lost_ Cathedral...?" She said gasping in awe. 

"It is_obviously_ not lost." He said motioning not just to them, but to the graves before them, "It is hidden. It is _hiding_ if anything." 

She looked at him with a sort of squint and head-tilt you see in people when something profound and unexpected happens. This was not profound though, especially not to him. It was truth. That fact made it somehow more unexpected though. He was so mysterious and knowledgeable. Like some lost poet or philosopher sifting and shifting through the world as if he knew everything and wanted_nothing_ to do with _any_ of it. This was also truth. 

"Who are you really?" She finally asked, no longer able to sustain the absolute agony of holding it in. 

"I've told you already. The answer is the same as where I am from." He said with a touch of finality. He wanted to say no more, but she could not leave it as such. She could not leave it with simply 'it's complicated'. 

"But you must tell me." She pleaded again, "I need to know. Don't you feel it, that..._connection_? You _have_ the answers I need. I _need_ you to help me." 

He felt it alright. He had felt it before he even really saw her proper. Standing outside that little church of Fiona's, he had seen that one lone figure stand up against the Wolfs in a last desperate attempt at life. She would have fought to her death, "What do you fight for? Where do you come from? Who are _you_?" He shot each question out like a little accusation, "I have no answers. Now, I am simply Gil. If you must know, I am searching for my past. I am hoping for a future and I am _most certainly_, hating this..._present_. You should stay away from me if you value...anything..._anything_ at all." 

"I have nothing _to_ value Gil." She said. The words formed from her small and tightly pursed lips and the look smeared across her face dug into him like a rusty nail. There was a memory he had that was very much the same as this. Perhaps _he_ was the one who had spoken those lackluster, yet poignantly moving, words and formed that frown of a face. Or did someone say it to him? Another girl...? A woman...? Perhaps it was actually man...? 

"But, I'm trying...I think." She finished, dropping through the dim cloud and dubious fog of his memory. _These are odd moments._ The thought jabbed at him. _Why is this happening like this?_ It didn't seem to make sense. There he was, reliving his memories. What was he doing here with this girl, hungry for answers? There he was again, acting a fool, trying to defy it. So he gave in. 

"I'm here..." He started abruptly, "To find the answers _I_ seek. I am certain you will find yours if you follow me. But I don't know if you'll like the answers you find. I don't know if you'll survive them. I just know it's just as important that you find your answers as I find my own." 

"Yes, I know it too." She said, losing her own thick surface of frustratingly murky fog, "Like something wills it so." 

"Annuit coeptis, perhaps, but _we_ will it so." He declared thinly, "No matter what _could_ be guiding these things, _we_ choose the paths we lead. No one wears your shoes for you." 

"There is no such thing as fate." She said just as plainly, finishing his thought.

* * *

She helped him gather wood for the fire as he fetched some water for her. She watched him recite the words and watched the flame rise from nothing and burn cleaner than any fire imaginable. There was no smoke to give signal and barely a bubble of noise. The sun was swallowed by the sea more than a few hours ago. They had worked in silence gathering, making sure not to take any of the markers, not even the fallen ones. No more questions would be answered, for that night at least. 

She drank steadily from Gil's leather flask that reminded her of a kidney and wiped her mouth when she was finished. 

Gil removed his gloves slowly. The fire's bluish light making his skin glow. The glove that was covered in the girl's blood had another glove underneath. A mesh of denadorite links, a chain mail glove. Marcy's eyes widened at this, but she was not particularly surprised at his cleverness. She was warmed by it. 

Both of his hands had four distinct crescent moons in the palms spattered with his own dried blood. The blood had coagulated very soon and it had been flaking off of his skin for some time. He rubbed his slender hands together, wiping it all away. This was not the first time he had done this. Not with his own blood or with that of someone else. It was not the last time he would do it either. Not by far. 

He looked down at his hands when he was satisfied and in his mind he smiled. His eyes showed it briefly and Marcy had enough time to glimpse it. Blood spilt into his hands was so natural of an occurrence. He looked up at her then and studied her bright eyes, her now blank face, and her youthful body. 

"Rest..." He said at last, looking down to the ground at her feet. And she proceeded to lie on the solid earthen ground without so much as a word or even a simple nod. She looked at him one more time, and then turned to the stars for a moment before shutting her eyes. He sat and observed her there for an hour or more, slowly breathing in and out. He watched the steady rise and fall of her petite little breast and the flicker of her eyes as she reached REM and began to dream. 

The movements made him tired. He wondered what he was supposed to really do with this powerful little girl. What her purpose was in his journey or what, perhaps, was _his_ purpose in her own little quest. The unanswerable questions simply cluttered his mind. They had no real use currently. They would be answered when, and only when, the time came. So he swept them up and put them away. And he too slept...and dreamt.

* * *

**_Don't waste your time..._**

* * *


	8. Chapter 08, e N n l O e F f l O

** 1025A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 8-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES** **  
CODE - MAGNESS**  
**CODE EX. - "****e N n l O e F f l O****"**

Fear for one, then absolute uncontrollable madness. It must have been. It was hundreds of them and just one to stand against; one little girl with her hair bunched up and hidden on the top of her head. That-s all if could have been was madness. But still she stood, unwavering in this great peril. The Wolfs of the forest were ravenous.

Their heads were hunched down like the dogs they were, ready to pounce. They were ready...to kill. This was reflected in her own eyes, even if she hadn't the power to do so. She was still just as ready. More ready, for she knew her life was on the line. The hazard signs were all there she could have thought; alone in the forest in a church in its decline and the howls getting ever closer. The howls that were put aside and not thought of until it was too late and they came crashing through the chapel windows.

Her fists beat into the square jaws of those first wolfs with fury. Their fur was mostly grey with splotches of blackened mud and dirt. Most of it was neither dirt nor mud. It was dark and red and it was not paint. Their claws were tiny daggers protruding from the tip of each finger. But they were sloppy and shaky from hunger, so their hands missed, where hers had held true.

In the end of course, it wouldn't have mattered how true her tiny fists with their big gloved knuckles hit those first couple wolfs. It wouldn't have mattered if she had hit each one with a good solid blow. There were simply too many. They would have flooded her and her blood would have spilt and stained the glossy wooden floors of the church. It would have happened just like that, in the flicker of a moment in time, if not for _him_.

She tried to hold onto the image of him and his glorious entrance not just into that place in the woods, but into her life. He would change her forever. It had already begun. This image slipped away from her though and it was replaced with a much more familiar one; a lone doorway.

The heavy oaken door seemed to stand without any support. The hinges were attached to nothingness. Upon the door, three words were writ. No, they weren't written, they were engraved, they were part of the door. The edges of the large black letters seemed brimmed with gold. This is what they said:

**--- (YOU Fate) ---**

****** (Loss)**

The handle was the same type of shining gold that lined the letters. It beckoned to be held, to be turned, to be pulled. She had no choice. A hand reached out and grasped the knob; Marcy's small gloved hand. It turned the doorknob without her actually willing it to. Although she wished very much to see beyond the door, at the same time she feared the other side. Very momentarily, the thought of why the words were writ as they were swamped her mind. The first two words were wrong; mismatched or misspelled? They weren't in the right order. They didn't make sense. No, they made sense. They were very important, but they also didn't matter at all.

The door opened easy as paper and she was swept away...

* * *

The hall was great and made of stone. It seemed a dark remnant of an ancient castle. Now the hall was a great staircase leading down in a maddening spiral...down and down and _down_. These were dizzying depths. The torch glow changed from a regular and natural orange & red to that of an uncannily evil and unsteady flicker of black & blue. They became brighter and brighter as the stairs crept downwards. 

There were great sweeps of faceless people that kept falling. They would approach a gloved hand-somewhere close in the foreground-and for whatever reason, they would duck down or crouch or lie down or tip backward suddenly. The gloved hand held something; something that must be shown very quickly to these people and then put away again. What was it? Only a flare of shining white or silver could be seen when it was taken out.

Light blue strands of something (String...? Hair...? Impossible to tell in all this blur...) kept getting in the way and were swept aside from view. The hands continued into the depths until finally the end came and there was a door with something writ upon it. After the door-writing overlooked and quickly forgotten-there were more people who did lie down and someone else as well. The same thing was shown to her as well, although by that time it was as if the showing was that of an over-enthusiastic child. They were very proud and uncaring for the thoughts of those who were shown their prize. The hands were just moving out, showing everyone in sight. It was shown to this last one the quickest of all and yet time seemed to stop altogether for it.

This last one, the most unexpected of them all, let out a small gasp. Perhaps it was of terror, but it sounded more like shock, dismay, regret and anguish all rolled into one little exhale. No, it wasn't from her. It was from that whose hands were doing the showing. The coldest of chills ran up and down both their spines and for the first time he not only felt, but actually revealed-in sunken face, stuttering hands, and sulking posture-his ultimate surprise at this, his ultimate of failings.

* * *

There was a tremendous shift and he was no longer there. For a prolonged moment there was only darkness. Only there wasn't only darkness. There was his immense misery...and along with it, a sound. It was strikingly familiar. It was like laughter, but it was not jovial, no joy or real sense of cheer could be discerned from this sound. It was malicious like only _he_ had ever known anything to be. 

Then it was gone and the darkness faded with it. He saw a smoky house emerge from the sinister depths of the gloom. It too was strikingly familiar to him. There were a few major differences with it though. It seemed a touch larger here than his memory held. There were also many people about it inside, banging at sturdy windows. The doors nailed shut from the outside. And the most major and significant difference of all was the most clear-cut; it was alight with enormous flame.

At the top floor he saw and recognized a face. Although it seemed older and finer than he remembered, her face was still wrapped in large round glasses that held onto those bright blue-green eyes he knew. Tears welled up in these eyes. Flames danced behind her and caught her back aflame. She banged on the glass either to get his attention or out of desperation from the fire, he couldn't tell. She mouthed five words into the shadows of the forest, "Save the children. Save Kid."

* * *

"Lucca!" He screamed to her. But he was no longer asleep. That last word in his dream had struck him awake like a splash of cold water. Marcy awoke at his outburst with the same sort of acuteness. Neither of them said anything. They just sat for a moment and breathed deep breaths. Both their dreams had led into frightening depths of unknowingness. _Just dreams_, they thought simultaneously, but these things were more than mere dreams and at the heart they both knew it. 

Gil checked the stars and noted that he had been asleep for several hours. It felt as though no time had passed in the forest. The moon was a sliver that was mostly tucked between the rim of trees and the awaiting waters of the western sea. What could be seen of it cast an eerie azure light on the assembling of trees.

A faint glow flickered to one side and he looked in its direction; toward the middle of the once grand cathedral, toward the tree. The strange non-words, the markings and even those two contorted bumps glowed strangely. A deep white, that was the nearest to gray he had ever seen light shimmer, shot fiercely from these marks.

"What is that?" She asked. Her brow twitched with a confusion and fearfulness that was all too well deserved (whether she knew it or not at the time was another matter entirely). The tree shook slightly and a lone leaf drifted from an innermost branch down to the waiting ground below.

"I...don-t know." He answered with his eyes firmly concentrating on the radiance of the grand tree. The light exuding from the letters and marks intensified and seemed to seep into the tree itself. The light grew and grew until they were forced to shield their eyes-now pinpricks floating in white-from it. Marcy averted her gaze slightly, but kept peering back and forth in quick little bursts. Gil put up a steady arm, but still tried desperately to see what was happening to the tree in-between his fingers.

There was a rumbling sound that seemed to be coming from the earth itself. This grew like the light and the rumbling turned into a thunderous noise that shook their footings loose. Marcy fell straight on her ass and Gil toppled over to one side, catching himself at the last moment before he would have struck his head into a good-sized jagged rock. _I certainly don't need_ that _again_, the thought flashed in his mind sardonically at the brief memory of his 'encounter' with the future-s metallic floors. He continued to look in the direction of the tree, with its blazing white light.

And then, as soon and suddenly as it had all started...It stopped.

"I...I..." Marcy started, stuttering, "Uh...Un err...earthquake?"

Gil glowered at her with slit-eyes in a brief moment of contempt. She overlooked this.

"Then...What the hell _was_ that shit?" She asked with only the briefest hint of fear in her voice, his anger had brought out her own.

"I'm not sure." He said looking at the enormous tree. Had it grown? There was something different about it that he saw almost immediately, "The marks..."

"They-re gone..." She finished his statement in surprise. A flash of a memory entered Gil's mind. A fire and a house and a woman he knew. When did that happen? Just now, right now? Was it happening now? Not a memory, a dream. Was it truth?

"Lucca..." He whispered the word. And like magic, it conjured up a horrific storm in that part of the forest the likes of which he could never have constructed himself. The other trees shivered with anticipation-or fear?-and leaves fell around them like snowflakes. Great groans were replaced with terrible shrieks and cracks that filled the forest with their clamor.

It took him by the ankle and up into the air before he knew exactly what was happening. It was a flash of movement that neither of them really saw until the deed was done. His sickles clattered to the ground. More and more struck forth from the ground; some straight and others like curled toes. Long and slender roots sprung forth that were more reminiscent of branches or even hands. The one that grabbed Gil swept around his ankle and proceeded to spiral up his leg several times, overlapping itself.

They seemed to dance in the darkness in deep swaying movements, pretending there was a strong breeze. There was no breeze. No noise at all but the crackling, shifty, movements of the root-branches and Gil's grunts as the root squeezed harder and harder, digging its tip half an inch into his inner thigh. The pain jolted him just as he was getting his wits back. _If only...the sickles..._The scattered thought flashed.

Marcy was busy dodging numerous root-branches as they sprung forth from the earth and tried to grab at her; her legs, her arms, her hair, her skirt. One finally reached up high and swung in a large arch and bashed her one good across the side of the head. Gil saw this in slight glimpses as he was flung about by his leg. His eyes were opened wide as windows upon seeing her body sailing off into the forest. Her hair was mostly undone and as she disappeared her movements resembled that of a swimming dragon.

There was pain looping up his leg again and then another root circled his other leg and up his spine until it held his skull like a great pitchfork of a hand. He saw the great tree again before he was smashed into it head first and knocked unconscious.

* * *

_Huh...Another dream?_ The thought seemed to float out of him from far away. _No,_ this _is the dream...How I tire of dreams..._

___Don't we all?_ The voice entered his head. There was some kind of chilling resonance to that voice; like it came from a great aluminum hall and a vast open field at the same time. He only knew it was a kind of husky deep voice; the smith on the bridge, Zappa, came to mind, but only because he was on the surface of his memory. The voice laughed at him. Reading his thoughts?

His mind swirled momentarily and finally a kind of background emerged. It was scenery in a sense. It wasn't any kind of reality. It wasn't a place or a time. It reminded him of clouds; how they can so easily be cast off as nothing more than sky. Something up there in the heavens to mark the ground from everything else, like a huge grey & blue backdrop. But if you looked close enough and looked with just the right kind of eyes, you could really see and think of clouds as they are; dimensional and substantial things of weight (although limited) and size that float and move about in the air.

___Your mind be in the clouds I see._ This voice was different.

___It...It's that stupid frog._ He thought this with a kind of wonderment.

___Aye and nay..._The thought echoed as the other had. He heard clearly with his mind's ear his heavy-not to mention heavily unmistakable-Old English accent mingled with a sparse assemblage of those familiar rumbling guttural ribbit frog noises. ___For thou art dreaming and yet thou are not..._

_____What do you mean to say? This is more than a dream?_ He saw in his mind's eye the short, but humanoid, frog there at the summit again; that's what this particular backdrop was, that summit in Denadoro.

_____How many times have thou knowest thou were dreaming?_ This was true. He could not think of many, if any, times where he was fully aware, right from the start that he was dreaming. Surely he never dreamt that a dream questioned him about his state of dreaming. Most dreams felt the same to him. You never really 'see' anything in a dream, that's not possible; you just know things for what they are.

Cyrus, the fool, appeared beside him at a small distance. There was something frightfully wrong with him though; although it was actually a common occurrence in his dreams of Cyrus. He seemed to shimmer and change with his movements. One moment he would be decked in his full regalia of knight's armor. The next he would be a flaming corpse of blackened bone and charred meat. It was actually a common occurrence of many of his worst enemies which he had laid to waste. There was a countless number; not just of laid enemies, but of dreams.

_____You're going to need help this time, Janus of Zeal, son of Zeal._ The fool said this last part with a sort of smirk that faded when he shimmered and the smirk was replaced with a skull; the smile faded because of this, _somewhat_.

_____They'll die as you died._ He said to them, thought to them.

_____We do as we must to find our own answers and to do what we must._ They both said this in remarkable unison, mouths moving like puppets. Their voices mingled together and died in the vastness of the fake landscape surrounding them all.

_____You didn't have to die, Cyrus, you fool. You died for the pathetic belief in your country and for your even more pathetic King; your ignorant beliefs in boundaries. They're nothing but imaginary lines separating imaginary rights between two nations._ His thought was cut off as the scenery dropped around him to reveal...

* * *

Dizzy, that's all. She was just a little dazed. She stumbled out of the forest somehow. That had to explain the change. But how could she explain the intense heat, the vast coldness, the blinding light, or the heart-breaking darkness? All these things drastically flooded her senses at the same time. 

Then all became clear. Clear enough anyways to see what was meant to be seen. There was a city of some sort. A kind of city she had never seen. It had buildings, although mostly obscured from her view, that were very large in scope, but they seemed to serve no real purpose. She saw only one place she recognized, a place that held some kind of memory in her mind. It was a playground. But it wasn't whole. It was destroyed.

The entire city lay in ruin now that her eye-her mind-s eye-focused on the surroundings. The slide broke off prematurely into nothing, there were only three bars on the partial set of monkey-bars, and the sandbox was hard blasted to a reflecting glass. Something beyond horror happened to this place; this dead place.

But it wasn't dead. She heard it echo in her head like an oncoming train; the steady beat of a drum or bass. She looked up to where she thought the sound originated and she saw it was none of those things. It was something living. It was...A heartbeat...It was...A lone crow riding the top of a squall high in the sky.

It was surrounded in life. The Shadows swallowed it. The Flames burnt it. The Water drowned it. The Lightning struck it. And the Wind...The Wind of the Darkness...It rode it like a steady breeze. With the ease of one under constant pressure from forces such as those...Surrounded in life & death...Casting both in long shadows of shimmer light...On and on it flew, gliding the crest of an awful and wonderful wave, and nothing could stop it...

* * *

_____IPSO FACTO!_ The words blared into her head like a siren and everything was gone. Where had she heard those words? Had she?___Ipso facto!_

* * *

The fake scenery dropped around him to reveal..._____reality_. He was surrounded in it; root, branches, bark, wood...tree. One eye was blocked from the outside world, along with most of the rest of his body. Blood ran into the other, blurring his already limited vision. He was weak as well, a terrible weakness. It was draining him not just of his blood, but of his ability as well. The sound of humming enveloped him. No, it was not a hum. It reminded him of something more like a purr and under different circumstances he might have smiled (inside his head anyways). It was excitement. It was ecstasy. It was coming from the great tree in which he was encased. 

"Whff...gar...char...yu...tree..." He tried to speak, tried to ask what it was.

_____I can hear you._ A voice said in his head. It was soft, kind, and innocent. It was the voice of a child.___Don't worry...Janus...Janus Zeal...of...Zeal...son of Zeal._

The voice smiled in his head. It laughed at him. He could feel it swarming his mind when it searched for a name. _______Get out of my head._ He thought calmly. Calmly was teh only way he could. He was too weak to be as ferocious as he would have liked; even in his mind, if not especially.

_______You spoke of the master._ Its voice now boomed directly into his brain._____You spoke of our creator. So you shall be drained and your knowledge will become my knowledge. Your power will be my power._

_________It won't work._ He thought, but he knew it would. It smiled, looking him directly in his mind's eye. The images he was thinking of flew into his mind. The markers they saw as they entered; the graves. No passing strangers had done those burials. The markers weren't struck into the ground, they came out of it.

_________Oh, but it will work...Oh how it will..._

___________Monster..._

_____________Yes, I've been called that before Janus Zeal of Zeal, son of Zeal. If you must label me though, I-d prefer my name as much as you would like me to stop calling you by yours. She called me...NioFio._

_______________She...Lucca...? Created...You...?_ The words were getting harder and harder to think. They were slipping from his mind almost as soon as he thought them. It was as if the creature-now known as NioFio was eating his thoughts.

_______________Yes...Lucca...Our master...Our creator..._

_________________Im...Im...possih...bull..._He could not manage the one word. He could no longer think. He only gazed through his own blood and swelling tears out into the red darkness of the very early morning.

* * *

"Let him _________________be_!" A sharp and angry voice shot out from that very same red darkness. NioFio's grip (its roots and branches) on Gil lessened a bit at this voice; at the fury in the voice. Then it tightened again, like a child holding on to a toy during clean-up time. 

"NO!!!" The defiant voice of NioFio was the same as the one that talked in Gil's mind, but this time it was much louder. It screamed the words, "I DON'T WANT TO!!! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!!!"

In a flash it shot snaky tendrils of roots into the forest where the anger voice seemed to come from. Gil was still heavily dazed, but he was picking up parts of what was happening. The roots came back battered, broken, and..._________________Cut_? How was that possible? Of course, this question did not occur to him. He was too far gone; too lost. The great tree however _________________did_ wonder this, and that thought transferred into his mind.

_________________You...die..._Gil thought to the creature known as NioFio.

Two lines, streams, of light flew and caught hold of the mighty tree. Two more followed. They glowed with blue fire. They were blue fire. Then he saw her. The lines stretched up to her, high in another tree, and she jumped and for that moment she was an angel floating down to save him. Her eyes though...Her eyes were bleeding...But it wasn't really blood, but he couldn't see and thought as much. It was black. It was grey. It was dry, but now wet with tears she didn't feel. It was ash and it covered the sides and corners of her eyes like badly smeared mascara and eye shadow.

"Let him _________________GO_!!" She said again, the hatred was lingering and was being companioned with a stern look of irritation, impatience, and annoyance; pure abhorrence. There was neither hesitation in her voice nor falter in her movements. She tugged on the streams of light (memory of this later would surface in Gil's mind, reminding him of shackles from the future) somehow attached to her hands-or was it her fingers?-and the creation of vegetation screamed in mind-numbing hurt that trailed off into a hoarse cry, "_________________Now_!"

* * *

"C'mon!" She said hauling him carried over her shoulder. She wiped at something she didn't truly perceive next to her eyes with her free forearm before trying to steady him with it. He bent down to pick something up, and toppled over onto it instead. She picked him back up and they left, he managed to clutch his failing hands around his belongings and his sickles. The streams of light followed behind Marcy as they went, still attached to the great monstrosity. 

"Let...let us go..." NioFio cried out into the darkness like a small and frightened child, "Let us go...Please...!"

* * *

If one were to follow those blue vines of light, one would find that same tree, dying or dead. As Marcy & Gil left the forest, the lines of blue firelight were attached to the tree and they led to a small bunching of bushes which she had tied and broken them off at. 

"I hope you die." She whispered under her breath, glancing back a moment as they left that damned forest with Gil's slack arm around her shoulder. Neither of them knew if he would ever regain anything, but they knew of only one person who stood any chance of helping...

* * *

**________________****_At this rate, you too, will meet a hideous fate..._**

* * *


	9. Chapter 09, Hard Boiled

** 1025A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 9-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION** **  
CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES** **  
CODE - MAGNESS**  
**CODE EX. - "HARD BOILED'**

Lucca Ashtear was asleep. Lucca was dreaming of a bad day; the worst day, possibly the worst day in the history of the world. He was dead and she was alone. Her world, this worst-bad-day-world, was shadowed in the deepest darkest depths of black and getting blacker all around. Then there was a light...

* * *

It had taken up the body of a prolonged and vigorous day. The early morning saw them to the old forest's edge and into the open grass fields. The rest of the afternoon found them dragging down the road, sometimes following the masses headed for the weekend-long revels of the United Festival. 

Gil was barely aware. He was coming in and out of consciousness with a mind that was reeling, as if the chains that anchored it into his skull had decided to snap. He was at a terribly drained state. The nerves and synapses in his body were functioning at some insubstantial lower level, hardly more than a spark moving his legs. Marcy more and more was forced to drag him on as they went. Her very own strength and vitality were being sorely tested.

The day was as hot as the one before it, as hot as the one after it would be. There was a despairing wind giving gusts of hot air into both of their faces every dozen feet or so. The grass bent lazily under her feet as she strolled along. Gil's drunken feet slid through and he was like a large vessel being drawn along by confused little tugboats. A hoard of people had gone past them five minutes ago and she had asked for directions while balancing Gil slung over a shoulder. She spat dust and dirt from a rather harsh blast of air to her left, Gil on her right.

His eyes opened briefly and the sun glared them shut again. He tried his hardest to move along with Marcy, but found it increasingly difficult. His mind was far more than wondering. It was lost in a fading fog of thoughts, ideas, faces, places, memories, and prophesies, "Isle...South...Truce...' He managed to say in a horse little whisper into her ear.

"Yes, yes, I know..." Marcy cooed back to him. She had gotten as much information from a passing stranger. Gil himself had been muttering this-as sporadically as he gained awareness-since they left the forest, although before Marcy asked someone, she hadn't been able to make out his harsh murmurings.

She was getting tired and the sun was burning at her trail-brazen tanned skin. As much as she hated doing it, she had to stop and rest in some shade. She hated it more that the shade came from a great big tree. Although this tree was a needles rather than a leaf, it still gave her chills to be so close to it after their experience in the forest. A pushed away part of her began to question what she was doing with this man._He saved my life,_ that's _what._ She reasoned to herself.

* * *

The door again, the blue light again, the faceless people and _her_. It all happened again. But this time she saw him approach-still making no leeway-and she wore a tired little smile that turned into a tired little frown. He stopped and looked at her, confused. The words traced his lips, but made no sound. _I've found you._

She looked down at him, looking into his bright eyes and then her gaze drifted downwards. _No._ She said, in his mind. The word was filled with sorrow and regret. He was as confused as he had ever been. More than when his mother shifted. More than when he was first engulfed in blue light. More than when he killed. More even than when he saved the world and finally got his revenge. _I'm sorry for what you've had to go through and for what you've done._

He felt heavy. Something like an anchor weighed him down. He looked into his hands and saw what she had seen; two bright ruby-colored sickles. They glowed and pulsed. And they dripped a terrible color; a terrible, scarlet, deathly color. A color he knew. A crimson liquid he had seen before in just that same place.

And it all faded away...

* * *

There was so much pain. Marcy wondered if she had ever felt such pain before in her entire life. So many aching muscles and her eyes felt as hot as if they were burning to boot. Not even when she was lost and her brother gone did she feel such pain. Not when their father left them before she had even left the womb. Not in seeing her mother endlessly crying in front of that stupid mirror, thinking, of all things, about that stupid man that it represented. On the day her mother Zelbess died, she smashed that mirror into a hundred pieces. 

She was young then, much younger than she was now, and the bad luck followed her. On the day her brother was taken, she destroyed those hundred pieces and the vanity itself. When she was done, she stopped crying, almost forever. But the bad luck continued to follow her, like some secret spiteful silhouette of a shadow covering all of her mind & heart.

She thought Gil was the end of her bad luck. She was wrong. He would prove to be the biggest bump in her road she'd yet to come across. He was the Mount Olympus of bumps in the road struck right in the middle of her path. What happened with Gil would decide the outcome of her entire life. In many ways he was her future, her new beginning, but in many other ways he was her end.

* * *

The day was dying, but even in his depleted condition he managed to glace up for a quick moment as if he saw something-expected to see something again-there up in that purple bruise of a sky. But there was naught again but an endless sky and a few stars just beginning their sweeps of the heavenly night. He had dreamt his usual dream, although it had ended most unusually. Marcy had been lost in deep thought before she fell into a dreamless rest. She gathered him up again-his legs buckled less-and they sauntered off in an easterly direction; toward the approaching darkness.

* * *

He was dead and she was alone. Crono was dead. He had been for untold years. It was long ago when she was just a toddler really. They hardly knew one another. Only through minor visits of his mom and hers. Although in those years, visits such as those could be seen as deep friendships in waiting. Surely if he had survived they would have been great friends, possibly even lovers...down the line. 

It effected her little then, as young as she was, and yet, there was nearly nothing in the world that would effect her any greater. His companionship and encouragement would have made all the difference. It would have made her a better person, one even that knew of modesty, although seldom used and often only in joking. Instead she was blunt, often cold and often alone. She was disliked and scorned by both peers and adults.

Her major talent laid no longer in science. That path now repulsed her. She held only contempt for her father whose foolish gift for the near-profitless trade had given her mother Lara neither two crushed legs nor a fear of machines, but only a plunge into the depths of death. She made no promise to learn as much as she could about machines, only a promise to hate them forever.

Lucca learned not of data and information, but of the arts, mostly those martial in nature. She developed her own style of katana sword-fighting which she called Liquid Fire; akin to Tai Chi it focused on flowing movements with breaking power that resulted over long periods of training. Through her development in martial arts, she also developed a kinship with the other arts; mainly painting, drawing, and water color. The colors, shapes, and lines she used were all very sharp and harsh. Most works would end up mostly in the black spectrum. The little color she added was blood-red as the flames of hell, and the pictures seemed to capture just that notion.

She was haunted by seas of flame and darkness.

* * *

Lucca Ashtear was still dreaming this dream-it seemed like something more than a dream though-in her shack of a laboratory located at the back of her two-story house. Still dreaming, that is, until a thunderous sound radiated and reverberated around her. The dream was lifted from her memory as the noise filled it with confusion. Someone was at the lab's door. She could see an outline of two people through the dimness of the waning moonlight spilling through the glowing white curtain pulled over the door's square window. 

One small and another larger hunched over figure being supported by the first. Lucca grabbed for a weapon, and found her trusty hammer. She cocked it back, ready to strike, as she put a hand on the door's knob.

Another crash startled her and she had to let go of the door to catch her hammer as she fumbled it. She grasped it in both hands now and drew it back like a bat.

"Who's there?" She asked to the door. It wasn't one of her kids she knew, they would have called to her first at least. And they knew better than to interrupt her during her work in the lab, even though most seemed to know that as of late she had been doing more sleeping and reminiscing in there than any actual work.

There was a shuffling sound and she could see the larger shape put a hand on the glass of the window as to support itself better. There was a mumbling coming from that shape that she couldn't understand. She could only pick up a few words.

"Lucca..." A raspy cough escaped from that shape, "Help...Know me...Open...Now."

"Who are you people?" She said, a little anger and frustration flowed through her at the shape seemingly demanding she open the door right now, "I won't ask you again."

"Please Miss Ashtear." This came from the smaller shape. It was the voice of a young girl. No one Lucca recognized, but she thought for a moment it could have been someone she knew from a long time ago, but the shape called her the wrong name. Who she was thinking of would have called her 'Sis', "He's really banged up and could use your help. He's been looking for you for a while I suppose. I think you know him."

"She...Knows me..." The larger shape said, more clearly now, "But I was another person then..."

Lucca involuntarily shuddered with recognition at both the voice-now slightly more steady-and those words; words she had heard so long ago on a snowy cape, lost somewhere in the past, "It...It can't be..." She said. She had dropped the hammer, and now she swung open the door.

* * *

"Okay, deploying group raid." The flight coordinator spoke the words through his headset. The faction sitting behind him consisted of four individuals in all, including the first officer. 

"We're going to surround the house at each side. We storm in only as I command. We don't know exactly where he is in there and we plan on knowing first." The first officer spoke to his team. The three nodded in unison, but the first officer didn't think they were really listening at all. Each one of them was dressed head-to-toe in the deepest black. Their transport was cloaked in some kind of invisible temporal field that hid them not just from sight, but from the ever watching eye of the entire self-preserving timeline.

Ropes unraveled from their transport, floating a steady thirty feet from the ground below. It was dark, but the first officer was the only one using night vision goggles. The others knew what they were doing and they saw with a clarity outmatching anything known to their objective lying within. Each was a survivor and each was perfectly suited to their task.

* * *

"It's been a long time." Lucca said finally after having Marcy and Gil come into her lab and they all sat around a long table riddled with various mechanical bits, "My god, how long _has_ it been?" 

"For _you_ or for _me_...?" Gil asked with only the slightest hint of cynicism. She detected it anyways though and smiled a little despite herself. She was always uncomfortable with his joking. She didn't like the way he could pass them off for seriousness so easily. This was because even in joking he _was_ mostly serious, "For you, it's been, what, twenty-five years or so? For me, though, it's been a mere one."

"Oh my...' She said at last, "Only...a year since all of that happened..."

"All of what?" Marcy budged in.

"Nothing..." Gil stated, "It's not the time..."

"Will it ever be?" Lucca asked. She checked his wounds, "What did this to you?"

"In a sense you did." Gil said, again only half-joking, "You know of the name 'NioFio', I assume?"

The name sent another chill of remembrance down Lucca's spine. An old project she had worked on with her then-assistant (now-self mutilated scientific genius madwoman). Then was some time around 1010 to 1020. It was only five years ago. _Time flies, Crono would say._ Lucca thought to herself.

"I'm sorry you had to come across that particular mistake of mine." Lucca said the words with a frown as she adjusted her glasses a bit to get a clearer look at Gil's wounds, "I have something that should restore you. Uh...What name have you taken this time?"

"Call me Gil."

"As in Gilbert...?" Lucca asked with a sly smile.

"As in_G-I-L_...Gil..." He said copying her smile. Lucca gave him a heal antidote that he spread throughout his open wounds and a medicine that he drank down hungrily. He didn't feel anything instantly, as he knew he wouldn't and was even told so. But he felt something like a pulse in his heart and his mind that felt quickened; something that demanded attention and something that wanted quick resolution.

"Lucca." He said to her only moments after drinking her medicine, "The Chrono Trigger, the one you have now, I need it."

"You...How could you know about that?"

"Because I am meant to know..." He said smiling this time only in his mind, "I ran into a Prometheus you programmed in the future. He told me these things; although that was the only answer he'd give regarding how he knew."

"Robo...?" Lucca asked inspired, "That's good to hear...I had always dreamed of doing something of his caliber."

"Apparently you will. There were actually robots more advanced than Prometheus there, whenever 'there' was that is."

"You don't know when you were?"

"I didn't exactly have the most time in the world." He said flatly.

"And now you want my Time Egg?" Lucca said with a questioning look that suddenly turned serious, "I never thought you'd have to go so far as to need my help again in your quest for her."

Marcy was lost in all of their words. _Chrono Trigger...? Time Egg...? Prometheus...? Robo...? The future...? Wait, the future?_ The words grounded her prematurely. How could Gil be talking about seeing something in the future? Were they talking about time...travel...?

"Who better, would you have me ask?" Gil said, once again returning with his sideways smile that didn't seem to touch his eyes at all.

"Ah, playing to my modesty, huh?" She said, returning her own stuttering half-frightened version of that very same smile (she couldn't get her eyes to stay stone-cold like his though). It was very odd to have conversation like this with him. It was if he had changed somehow. He had become more..._conversational!_

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Gil suddenly asked after a pause she hadn't picked up on.

"TIME TRAVEL ISN"T POSSIBLE!" Marcy suddenly burst out making them both turn towards her and then she immediately shrank back, "...right?"

This broke what little there was of Lucca's ice. She couldn't help but laugh at the girl before her. She reminded Lucca very much of one of her orphans. The first, in fact, Marcy reminded Lucca of her; of Kid. _How ironic that he should be with someone so similar to Kid._ Lucca thought to herself briefly.

* * *

Many things were explained as the night trembled on and the pulse Gil felt beat quicker still. Something was closing in. He could feel it. Lucca explained briefly how she and her friends, along with Gil, had traveled through time twenty-five years ago in an attempt to save the future and of how they were successful. Most of the details Gil said he would palaver with her about later if she wished. 

"The Time Egg..." Gil said again, "I need it, now."

"I'm afraid it isn't finished." Lucca said at last getting it off her mind, "There are still more algorithms that need to be set into motion."

"I know all of this. This is as finished as you'll ever get." Gil said.

"What? You don't know that."

"For now, I do, and for now, I'll take my chances with what you have." He said-all traces of any smile long gone. The pulse was a swelling drum on the sides of his head.

"But, it's dangerous..." She started, seeing in his eyes and feeling that_knowing_ in Gil that he was exuding; that knowing that he doesn't care and it doesn't matter because he's going to anyways, "...you don't know...where...when...it..."

"I am being hunted Lucca." He said. She couldn't tell for sure, but part of his eyes shimmered for a moment, pleading to her. It was only a brief moment that flashed on and went away as soon as she saw it.

"It's over here...hidden..." She said leading him to a small mirrored case set into the wall that would be facing the rest of the house. She pulled open the glass that revealed a medicine-like set of refrigerated tubes and beakers, set three feet off the ground. On the lower half of the cold-case, she moved a panel and revealed a small button that she pushed. Instantly, and with the sound of gears turning and pistons hissing, the three foot underneath lowered itself to the ground. The front of the hidden space sank into the ground, where Lucca had no doubt dug a door-fitting hole for just that purpose.

Inside the hidden place was a shimmering glass case. It held a wonder beyond imagination; a never hatching egg. _Is it hardboiled or three-minute?_ Lucca thought to herself. It was an imperfect egg. Two pairs of great interlocking spirals carved themselves into opposing sides of the golden-laced white egg. A yellow-golden wisp curled around it, circling from its top.

"Where do I have to go?" Gil asked.

"You're really settled on this, aren't you?" Lucca asked finally, looking at him like she would one of the ruffian kids at her orphanage who decided too soon that it was time to take off. He gave her the same look they always did, one determined, even knowing full-well that the outcome was very likely going to be a bad one, "The fairgrounds I suppose. The United Festival should be down for the night, I assume you're doing this right now?"

Gil gave her a nod.

"Yes, of course. Then go to where the gate used to be, do I assume too much in thinking you remember where that is? The grounds haven't changed much." Lucca said shaking her head, "You should take Gato with you."

"Gato...?" Gil asked confused. Marcy had given up on trying to be anything but confused a long while ago and was now looking into the shining infinity rings marked into the Time Egg. Those golden lines seemed so familiar to her, but she couldn't place them.

"Just for now, until you get to the grounds..." Lucca said with her arms folded in front of her, rationalizing it to herself as much as to Gil, "You're really being followed, I'd bet. He can sneak you in."

* * *

"Bay doors to the right of the laboratory opening." the first officer said into his communications unit.

"What the hell?" one of the three troops with the first officer asked stupefied as the approaching monstrosity hit moonlight. It appeared to be a giant cat-bot from a bad 80"s sci-fi television series.

"We follow it." the first officer said to them quietly, "Thunderbird can watch the Ashtear household for now."

The specters in black, following their first officer-who was following Gato the formerly-a-punching-bag, now a nanny-crept silently (except for the servos and motors whirring and buzzing about inside Gato) through the undergrowth of the Ashtear forest. Marcy and Gil were tucked away in Gato's barrel-round metal belly. Lucca's unfinished Time Egg lay within Gato's mostly empty skull. Although the kitty robot's punching glove weapon was removed from the stomach of the contraption, there still was not a lot of room. Gil found himself pressed up against a flush fourteen year old girl for the period of four hours, the last three spent with Lucca's drugs kicking into his brain and sending him into a euphoric daze. She loved every aching minute of it.

* * *

She had feared his coming since he had left them, Marle asking whether or not he'd search for his sister, and him just going to the portal, not saying a word. She felt this fear before as a twinge when they used the first Chrono Trigger, that first Time Egg, at his slight stammer at seeing her again in front of that monster (both Lavos the Destroyer and Zeal the Mother-to-them-both).

She had studied the Time Egg, as she of course did with almost every artifact they came across, both futuristic and prehistoric. Lucca knew she would be able to duplicate the process, but she didn't know if she could do it exactly, especially not anymore. She was old and her theories were holed. Her once associate Luccia had already made more leaps and bounds ahead of her in all aspects of robotics and android technology.

_But at what cost...?_ Lucca would think about all of these things. Did Luccia have some kind of Porre backing for all of her advanced research? Rumors abound of her having tampered with some Mystic DNA. Not so long ago, Lucca had heard, a Porre sniper was seen outside Luccia's brother's house shortly before his murder, although there was no solid proof or evidence found of this. Luccia had maddened and had her arms replaced with robotics so she could better hunt down the Porre troops responsible. She had not been seen or heard from since. Some say that her brother's body was never recovered. Some say she faked her brother's death herself in order to directly attack the Porre government and militia. Some wonder about the odd new android she keeps; the one with the mask, the blue skin and electric-yellow hair. _How much of it was just rumor...?_

And before, with that twinge at him, Lucca knew she'd see him again. His look, both at himself sprawled on the ground-defeated-and his sister mere feet away, the insane Zeal laughing it away, and that monster Lavos just sucking at reality like a sponge. All of it, frozen in time. He had wanted revenge so badly, that he risked this, his first chance to save his sister. He wanted to change so much. He had to atone, or saving her would have meant so little. And yet, those words too must have entered _his_ mind at that time.

_In a way_, Lucca thought, _I was keeping the secrets from myself somehow, like a trauma victim might. I wonder where it will take them..._

* * *

_**W...what have you done...**_

* * *


	10. Chapter 10, Candyland

** 1025A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 10-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES** **  
CODE - MAGNESS**  
**CODE EX. - "CANDYLAND"**

The going was long and rough. It was like the worlds slowest, longest, and yet smallest, train, possibly some kind of a ferry. It was like a roller coaster from a dull and pounding hell. And yet, against all of his resolve and self-control, it was still very agreeable. Most of that, he would tell himself at least, was due to the medicines that Lucca had given him not long before they left. The rest of it, and probably more likely the most of it, was due to Marcy's warm, diminutive, supple, and tender body pressed (did some of that pressure seem a bit forced?) against him. That _resolve_ and _self-control_ part of his brain would wonder why he should care. This was just a girl. She was not what he was searching for; although, in a way, she was. Gil did not think of that, but it is something worth noting.

Marcy felt warm for several reasons of her own. She did not like cramped small spaces. She had been confined-practically restricted-to a life that was free and open to the world. No one in her knowledgeable life had ever confined her as a punishment or for any kind of crime. She was in fact a clean slate criminally. The small areas frightened her because of all the many places like them she was forced into, because in reality, she was just as confined as any inmate and just as restricted from the world as any germ-o-phobic psycho. She had no family to turn to, no higher purpose beyond revenge, and no one else in the world she could look to. That was, until Gil shone into her life, glaring into the sinister obscurity of her shady internal oceans. She was happy to have him.

Another reason, of course, was because Gato himself was a warm bunching of metal pistons and all arrangements of gears and triggers and switches. Gil had seen him before and had decided it very unimpressive. Although, now it seemed to follow other commands other than 'fight' and 'sing'. Lucca had gained much insight on her travels abroad, but she rarely looked at her current advances, instead choosing to look at how far behind she still was in comparison.

Gil telling her she would never complete the Time Egg was a shocking blow to her ego. In the years to come she would wonder about his words. Having told her that meant that she could still plausibly overcome that and begin to think differently and change things. Knowing the future and the limits to one's alternate selves enables one to become empowered in one's search for answers and the ability to push one's limits may still rise. Although, under these same conditions one may simply burn out faster upon such knowledge.

* * *

The Agency for the Reparation of Time Streams (aka The ARTS) is an organization created in the-common-event that time traveling may ultimately affect the future in any way. This is because almost every effect can be both beneficial and detrimental. The ARTS is based within a self-actualized temporal field that works as a worm hole to a negative dimension of weightless, timeless and unlimited boundary. Their station lies within this worm hole. They guide along various rips in time as best they can, trying to make sure no temporal anomalies are created. Many believe that this in itself is a kind of temporal tampering that is somewhat unnatural.

Only the hardest trained and most able bodied are given the ARTS's ultimate duty of being a Guardian. The Guardians are trained to deal with combat situations regarding the detainment or termination of temporal refugees and other chrono-sequential desperados. They are a group of hand-picked specialist mercenaries from all around the world and from all over time-some lifted before death and some even revived shortly after.

Guardians are required to conceal their identities at all times, even in front of their superiors. Members are selected from statistical information and special techniques. Each one is as big a killing machine as the once Mystic King, Magus or as heroic in their duties as officers of Temporal Code as the once Guardian King, Crono was in his own duties as the Light Bringer.

There were three such Guardians being led by the first officer following Marcy & Gil, who were inside of Gato.

* * *

"So, what does that thing do?" Marcy finally broke the dazing silence. Gil was still slightly under the stupor of Lucca's formidable drug. Gil had much experience in the doctorate field (war time necessity) and knew when a drug was potent or not. This was a very strong drug indeed. He hadn't expected it, due to the cause of his wounds, the radical scale of them, Marcy's staggering show of power, and his although-expected-still-surprising reuniting with Lucca. Marcy pointed up, towards the head of Gato, "Y'know..._that_ thing..."

"It can bring the user to a point of frozen time." Gil said stolidly.

"So, time travel...it's...really..._real_?" She asked amazed.

"Real as Magic..."

* * *

For half an hour they sat-more accurately _hunched_-in quiet regard.

Gil knew what was coming. His power was returning to him as they approached. They had company closing in from behind. There were somewhere between three or six of them out there, waiting for him to emerge. His lesser worry was whether or not Gato would send them to the right place. Lucca had assured them that he was reliable in that sense, but what about when the fighting began? When the bullets flew? He assumed bullets, although he wouldn't count out more advanced weaponry, such as lasers. Whatever happened was going to happen quickly, he was counting on that.

Marcy felt this coming as well. She knew that the egg above them was something special. It was some sort of magic _beyond_ Magic (she was not one to keep up with the Sciences, especially not the advanced mechanics involved in a device such as a Chrono Trigger). All of this was just the key. The gate would be swinging open soon and she would have to go through into whatever land it led to, whatever time it spit them out. She would do it with him and she would be very fast indeed.

Gato on the other hand simply trudged along the beaten path, completely ignorant and/or unawares of those following, occasionally humming out a little ditty of a whistle.

* * *

When that half an hour was up, Gil's power was nearly restored, Marcy was uncontrollably giddy, and Gato was quiet as a mouse. The large and heavy latch in Gato's belly opened. Tiny servos and pistons kicked in and worked its head open, revealing Lucca's unfinished Time Egg. They were exposed to a very obscure and late nighttime. The moon was less than a tiny yellow thumbnail scratch at the very edge of the sparkling night sky; almost completely black and unseen as all the other little things in the shadows of the earth.

They had arrived.

* * *

Getting out of the mechanical beast was-believe it or not-a lot harder than getting into the clunky damn thing. An unknown fact to both Gil and Marcy was that Lucca had whispered something to Gato before they rushed off to their fate. She had given him some important instructions. Another fact, almost as important, was that, although Gato's punching glove was removed from its belly, it was not removed from Gato entirely. When the two of them exited and Gil took the Time Egg, a few more hissing noises could be heard within Gato, signifying not just his belly & head latch closing, as the duo thought, but also the glove being raised back into place.

* * *

They disembarked at the stairs leading to what was once where Lucca's Telepod demonstration was centered. That Telepod that seemingly started it all. It was a central area, but it was also a kind of out-of-the-way area as well; past the large, pristine, flowing fountain, past Nadia's Bell-proclaiming peace for all eternity-and into the trees of the very rear of the fairgrounds. The prime spots were taken by merchants and the various carnival games held around the front entrance near the spouting fountain. The red & white striped tip of Norstien's tent of horrors could be seen from almost every corner of the fair, including Lucca's isolated area.

Now, instead of two Telepods in the area, there stood a vast variety of vehicles having various and differing designs; some with large tread, some with large intermingled iron wheels, and some with great silvery sphere wheels. Some appeared to be trains, while others resembled all-terrain (there wasn't much use for anything that didn't cover rough environments) vehicles and still others were of completely unknown purpose to anyone but Lucca herself. Marcy glanced with curious wonderment at them until she saw that Gil looked past them all.

There was an open area at the very back of all of this. It was marked off in a circular chalk diagram. Gil staggered to the center of the circle, with Marcy following quickly-but timidly-behind. He held the faintly glowing Time Egg thrust upward to the shimmering, darkened sky.

"_Work_ for me!" He said aloud, looking up at the thing in his hands, his only hope. He concentrated on the place he wanted to go, the time, the moment, and the person he wanted to save so desperately. A single spark flew from the Egg and struck upwards. His eyes widened at this. The spark of light faded like a dying firefly. But nothing else happened. Unless, that is, you discount the attack.

* * *

Besides the twinge of a feeling that Gil & Marcy both felt, both sensing something approaching very close, only Gato really saw it coming. This is because his sensors were on overdrive. Besides his poor eyesight-Lucca could not figure that particular sensory (optics) function out-Gato had tremendous hearing, along with several other forms of sensory transmission. He could hear their radio waves for one. The electrical outputs of their pursuers' devices were not unique in that not many existed in this time period, but because they were completely foreign to it. The people themselves gave off intense waves of temporal energy like no one had ever seen. This is, of course, due to their stay in the ARTS pocket dimension. All of this information reverberated within Gato's circuitry like yellow fire. He turned and saw the four of them with his limited cat-like black & white vision.

* * *

One curious thing about Guardians and how they're chosen for their missions is their relation to the target. They are chosen in this manner only if the ARTS believe it will help motivate them to complete their mission or debilitate their target. Animosity is a thing held with regard with the ARTS. It is sometimes how they recruit. It is the easiest way really.

* * *

The first officer stepped up, just in front of Gato now, and held a kind of rifle pointed past Gato towards Gil, "Stop all this foolishness now and come with us. Come with us or you'll die."

"Will I?" Gil asked in a faint voice. He was lost, studying the failed Egg held, now lowered, in his hand.

* * *

"Be cautious and protect them at all costs." Lucca had whispered to Gato. Now he went to action. His midsection opened up in a flash and his comical boxing glove hand sprung out and knocked the first officer out cold and flat on his backside.

"My name is Gato!" He sang the first words to his song like a war cry. The glove returned and Gato turned to the dark trio, who now stood around on three sides, and shot the glove out again. The first dark one side-stepped like greased lightning, drew a thin-bladed sword and cut the glove's spring. The glove plunked to the ground with an only slightly comical, mainly tragic, little plop. Gato retreated, but the trio shadowed his movement.

It was hard to see all of this for Marcy. The darkness of the night, accompanied by the three people wearing all black, made a kind of shadow-puppet show. The katana seemed to float in mid-air and move unguided. But she could see their eyes, floating, swimming, in the blackness like cartoon characters. Their eyes seemed to glow; yellow, blue, red.

Twelve small flashing lights reflected these colors and served to light the black figures dressed head to toe in their dim garb. Four flickers of yellow color like rotted teeth, four fluid dead-blues, and four fiery reds that seemed pulled straight from hell. These lights pulsed and twinkled in the gloom of night. They sent glares of shrieking colors reflecting into each of their eyes and across Gatos metal hide.

Gil saw it first; that triangle of light forming at the ground around Gato. Then it rose up in great walls of light-that reminded Gil of the future-that made Gato fade and shimmer slightly. Each wall was a different gleaming color and they began to melt into each other. It was a spell Gil had seen before.

"Delta Force..." He said under his breath, for a moment forgetting about the Chrono Trigger in his hand. Marcy looked shocked at this display, and well she should have. She barely heard his words. He seemed to continue in some vague way, like he was speaking in an unknown language, but she couldn't tell for sure. Everything but the dark three and their Magical power seemed to be occurring someplace miles away. Even Marcy's own breathing seemed somehow distant to her. It was as if she were having an out-of-body experience. She was being swept up in a world she would never truly escape.

The lights faltered and finally faded and Gato was a heap of burnt, smoking metal. An occasional spark jumped and numerous hissing noises could be heard from within, but Gato was for the most part completely inert. All songs muted. All systems down. The light in its eyes was gone. The light in the eyes of the dark trio, whom Gil could now identify, flared briefly as they all turned their attention to Gil, speaking words deftly over the Time Egg, and Marcy, who finally decided to put her fists up and go out fighting yet again.

The katana was lifted and pointed at them. A crossbow was cocked in place. A plasma gun was drawn and aimed. The dark trio had them pinned and surrounded. The night chill heightened at that moment, but none of them had the time to feel it. Wind blew all around them. A special wind blew for Gil. It was not a friendly blow. It was blacker and colder than the night surrounding them. It was a deathly wind that always licked at Gil at such times. This wind could not-would not-be ignored, but he kept his concentration regardless.

A warble of Magical power sounded through Gil as Dark Mist bubbled out of the dark cracks of the forest and erased all sight. The dark trio's eyes disappeared in the utter blackness along with the glaring stars above. Gil reached out at the last minute.

"Give me your hand!" He shouted to Marcy. She weaved her arms through the smoke-like black haze and finally caught onto him. Their hands laced into a tight knot of fingers. Marcy had always thought the world a terribly bleak place. She always had such little hope in so many things. But with his hand grasping firmly onto hers, she felt something she hadn't in a long time: love. She didn't recognize it just then, of course. That realization wouldn't come until later, when there were more things on the line than just the two of their lives. It did however pull her back into the moment.

"What are we doing?" She asked feverously. He didn't answer her. He had no answer to give. He was stalling. He knew who these dark people were. One of them he had just seen. Or did he? No, these people really were dark strangers. These people he had never truly met.

An arrow zipped out of the darkness and struck a tree somewhere behind them. It had been very close to hitting Gil. He heard the air being torn as it whizzed by his face. They were shooting only half blind. Marcy and Gil were still in their circle. Gil knew it was the place he needed to be. It was the only way out.

Then the 'it' happened that signified the true beginning of the end for Marcy; the point of no return. She didn't realize that either.

* * *

_He never let go._ That one thought would stay with Marcy longer than anything. No matter what Gil could do or what could happen to her because of him, she would always remember what he did there at that point in time. _He never let go._

It was another dark red like those seas of hellish flame that Lucca would dream about; a small freckle of light that expanded and flared into a great line of flame. One of the dark Guardians seemed to have tossed this fire into the darkened mist. It sheared its way directly to Gil. He saw it coming.

"No!" He said raising a hand to shield the blast of Magical energy. But again, for the second time in a few lazy seconds, nothing happened. The fiery light and heat disappeared instantaneously. The Dark Mist began to dissipate. They could see the trio standing there, just beyond, weapons down.

Gil looked down into his hand-never letting go with his other-and into the Egg. It was disappearing. The infinity symbols were ablaze with gold-white light. The Egg was being sucked into itself like a black hole. But there was no noise. In fact, there was no noise at all. The night was still and in awe of the phenomenon occurring within Gil's hand. The Egg became a single brilliant light and it spread and burst between his fingers.

And now he and Marcy were fading as well. Gil looked one last time up at that trio. The one at the head, with the sword, took off his mask. He revealed a familiar face, but one that held more scars and hardship. There was more grit to it. A head with just as memorable, long, red hair pulled back.

"Go, then. There are other worlds than these." the red-headed man said briskly, "We have someone in mind here well-suited to hunt you."

And they were gone. Not just the trio. Not just the fairgrounds. Not just the Zenan mainland, but everything; the forgotten coolness of the night, the dusty mist, the glossy starlight, everything was gone. Just Gil and Marcy; their hands still clutched firmly together. But, in essence, they were gone too. Gone...from that continuum...

* * *

So the world was gone. Their enemies were gone. Their friends were gone. Their families were gone. Well, neither of them really had any friends or families...none available anyways. Either way, it was all gone; nothing but memories and fading after-images.

What replaced it was space. It was all just a blackness that they could not hear, or taste, or touch. And yet, there was also light; millions upon millions upon billions of iridescent gems of radiance. All of it went flowing past them like they were caught in a current of white-water rapids. It was white and fast, but it was not water. And it was far more dangerous.

"W-where..." Marcy sputtered. Her mind was reeling, but the one thing she held on to was that he had blocked with his other hand; the hand with the Time Egg, that which seemed to mean so much to him. _He never let go._ Their hands were still clasped together like Hansel & Gretel, abandoned, walking alone in that murky forest...toward the evil witch's lair of deception. But they had no bread to lead them back, even though no birds would eat it, and though they did not know it, there is always a witch somewhere along the path...

* * *

_**No turning back now...**_

* * *


	11. Chapter 11, L

** 1000A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 11-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION**  
**CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES** **  
CODE - MAGNESS**  
**CODE EX. - "L"**

They were both physically intact, but they were temporally and spiritually split apart like fragments or frames in a reel of film. Uncountable amounts of the two of them stretched beyond the infinity of the flowing white lights. The feeling of being torn apart in this way was both discomforting and divine at the same time. Each part of them began to fall. Parts converged and faded and melded again in a single nanosecond.

Again, they had arrived.

They survived.

But there was only white; still that same sort of dazzling pallid whiteness. It was white and cold. No more moon. No more sun. Just ashen grey-white clouds obliterating unseen skies. The snow, light on the ground, was just a dash more than a film covering the dead leaves on the dirty ground.

Their hands finally departed as they both turned in opposing directions, taking in this swift change not only in the area around them, but in the weather, the temperature, and the season. There were other changes too, of course, which did not occur to either.

_I've done it._ Gil thought. _I've made it back again._

His thoughts were filled with a place he had left twice before. The first time against his will. He was forced to leave by the will of an uncontrollable demon. The second time so that he could return earlier to fix things. Everything had sunk, so he temporarily joined the hero's troupe. His thoughts were wrong. His hand now only held a single scrap of insubstantial paper that fluttered there when a gust of particularly chilled wind blew past.

Marcy shivered. Her attire wasn't proper for winter. It cut deep into her like a sharpened icicle. She rubbed her hands together for warmth and blew curly, vaporous wisps of breath into the little finger cave she made.

"It's so cold Gil. Where are we?" Marcy said, giving up on warming just her hands, she now rubbed at her sides with opposing hands, her arms crossing at her belly.

"I believe we are...Earthbound." He responded. As soon as he said the words aloud, he realized they were false. This was not that world. The wind was not bitter enough. The cold wasn't sharp enough. The snow wasn't deep enough. Marcy would argue otherwise under the circumstances, but she knew this wasn't the place Gil wanted to be before he spoke again, "_No_...This time isn't...right."

"If we're not where we're supposed to be, then, what do we do?" Marcy asked, desperate to get out of the cold.

* * *

It was the closing year of our lord one thousand. The Millennial Fair and the Starlight Parade were both long gone, uneventful occasions. They were days of custom over celebration. The Princess, Nadia, was again absent as usual. Her free spirit would not be reined, but it had, in these later days, seemed to be sputtering out on its own. She was missing something. Her insides were growing cold and she was dying with the coming of the winter. 

Her father was being used, the kingdom of Guardia falling into ruin from within, and worst of all she felt a mounting hopeless sense of loneliness and purposelessness. She turned away her tutors and spent many nights crying at the window, high atop the castle (over four stories high and built strong and rugged), looking down at the forest and the whirls of smoke coming from family house chimneys in nearby Truce. The only thing that now served to drive her was her mother's (and her mother's before her and so on down a long ancestral line of over thirty women) sparkling Pendent.

* * *

Another girl, some ways a way (outside the castle, somewhere in the vicinity of Truce), was also clutching onto something sparkly. It was her father's best razor; one of those old clunky single-bladed things. It reminded her of a big buck knife. But the blade did not serve to drive this poor girl, no, no, no. She was going to drive it. Somewhere deep this time...as deep as it'd go. That wasn't the plan (never planned). It was just how it was laid out to happen. Blood was gonna spill. 

_Enough, I'm finished, finito, sayonara, say goodbye, see ya later alligata'._ Her thought.

Flicker flash, she saw it, and everything changed.

* * *

'Earthbound' he had responded, and then he thought that this time, this _world_, was not his former home. It was distant and alien to him somehow. The very cold was different in ways he couldn't comprehend. He had continued, saying that the time wasn't right. But something had interrupted his words. They didn't stop them, no; merely floated past them in an echo in the background of his mind. It was the echo of laughter, terrible, foreign, and yet, completely recognizable, laughter. Marcy continued on at a great distance, somewhere on another planet it seemed-the laughter continued, possibly intensified-and the only words of hers he heard were 'what do we do?' and then the laughter subsided. 

"There has to be a way." Gil said. The troubling laughter, that thing that had come from him in Fiona's Forest had somehow followed him. He had to put it aside for now though. There was too much going on, too many more important things. He thought: _There must be a reason. There must be. Why here, instead of where I want..._need, _need to be?_ He should have thought more about the laughter, should have said something, anything about it. It could have prevented a lot of...

"What went wrong?" Marcy asked, knowing well enough that he didn't know. It just made her feel better asking rather than just accepting.

"I-it wasn't complete."

Snow drifted down, stung at their eyes, and began to freeze their hair. Gil's upper lip curled up in a quick snarl as he looked up into the brazen white sky.

Flicker flash, he saw it, and things began to change.

* * *

She had seen them-from up in her father's room-come through in a dazzling portal of light that disappeared in the blink of an eye, like it was never there. Shortly after, he saw her dazzling blade. It reflected the whiteness of the ground and sky and appeared to be a shimmering blade of holy light. In a way, it reminded him of _that_ sword, the Masamune. But it was all wrong; white over red and katana rather than broad. Not to mention the wielder was much different than any Gil had ever seen handle the legendary Masamune. Only the grandest of lions dared touch that awesome weapon. 

"Who are you?" She said. _It cannot be. It's impossible._ She thought.

"I am Gil." he said, sickles already drawn at the sight of the blade. The paper, long forgotten, crumpled itself between his hand and his sickle.

"I'm Marcy." Marcy said to the familiar looking stranger with the sword. Marcy thought she looked very much afraid and did not so much as raise her gloved fists from her sides (she was still freezing from the cold), "Who're you?"

"I'm..." The girl looked puzzled at first, as if the question was unexpected.

"You're Lucca." Gil finished for her. Neither let their blade waver at this. Marcy still had her hands at her opposing sides, trying to gather some kinetic warmth.

"How do you know that name?" She pricked her katana up at him as if allowing him his turn to speak.

"You are Lucca of Guardia, daughter of Taban & Lara." Gil said. _What time is this; before the millennia? She looks so different now._

She was _very_ different. She was as youthful as the first time he had met her, but still, she was different. Her hair's pink color was all but dyed jet black, only a small strip of the front remained. And the hair's style itself was different. No self-inflicted helmet hair for this Lucca. It all came down in little spiky teeth at the edges of her face. Her glasses were smaller, thinner and more demure. This Lucca's skin was paler as well, as if she had actually managed to shut herself inside even longer than the Lucca Gil knew. Her body did not suffer it though. She had the tight and trained muscles of the devoted and dedicated. Then there was her sword and her stance. Both things were...

"Odd, I don't recall you using a sword like that though." He said. This made a smirk appear on this Lucca's face, "That style...who taught you that?"

"_I_ did." She replied, "Seems like you gotta go back and recheck your facts, huh?"

"No."

"Gil?" Marcy said looking over to him. The snow began to beat down in big stuck-together flakes.

"I am Gil, once of Zeal, once of the Mystics, once even of your friend Crono." He said, knowing only deep in his bones that something was wrong with when they were, with where they were as well.

"Jokes on you then, _Mister Gil_, I ain't got no friends; certainly no friend by the name of Crono. Only Crono I ever knew's dead and so are the Mystics last I heard. I've never even heard of 'Zeal'." She said this emotionally gravitating from sadness & sorrow to a disgusted kind of dismissal, "Who do you think you are coming here with this shit? You think I won't react? I won't fight back? Is that it?"

_Shit. She actually used the word 'shit'. This...this can't be..._Gil thought, brow cranked down.

"Um, I'm not sure what you're talking about, uh, Lucca, is it? Hi." Marcy interrupted his little train of rambling ideas, "Could you just tell us what year it is?"

"You-you're...from the...future?" She was mystified and she finally lowered her sword, choosing to replace it with her stammering index finger, "You're actually...you actually came from a portal. I saw you, but I couldn't believe it."

"Then you really aren't the Lucca I know." Gil said, lowering his weapons. There was a thick layer of frustrated dismay attached to his words.

"No, apparently not..." She said, mocking his tone. He glared momentarily at this and she let it go, "Besides, I'm not 'Lucca'. I'm Elle."

"As in the letter...?" Gil asked.

"As in Gilbert...?" Marcy laughed at him. Elle gave a scornfully odd little this-is-an-inside-joke-I-don't-care-for look (if such a look exists, Elle's certainly hit it on the nose) and then rolled her eyes.

"Sort of, as in E-L-L-E though, if ya wanna get technical..." There was a cutting silence that formed a flagrant emptiness then, now that they'd introduced themselves properly; confusion, frustration, and a lot of it. Marcy felt it most. She knew exactly what came next. What they needed now. Honestly, she had known as soon as their new surroundings appeared before them.

"It's cold. Elle, nice to meet you, but maybe we could find somewhere slightly less chilly and maybe on the dryer side of the ol' dampness scale?"

* * *

She adjusted her thin cat-glasses and pumped her right shotgun's barrel. The building around them was falling into rubble around them. She felt the bullets skim by as she sat in the midst of the onslaught. Her brother looked at her through the dust and grit of the breaking walls. She nodded with her eyes closed and then opened them again quickly. 

Rising, pointing her rock fists at her enemies, and firing the built-in weapons full force, she laughed and the sound was effeminate, psychotic, and roaring. The clip sticking out of her left machine gun arm clicked and she flicked it out and jabbed in another, waiting at her side, with the fluidity of ice water. The encroaching soldiers were obliterated in her wake like ants lining up to meet her boot.

Her brother meanwhile, his own guns blazing until they lay empty and useless at his feet, shot out both of his fists like grenades that exploded on impact, turning a group of the soldiers into so much dog food. Barrels appeared at his wrists where his hands had occupied and he fired more and more at the oncoming blue suits.

A whole regiment of the men in their cobalt getup began their charge. Her brother's hair flared and turned from its usual electric yellow to a blazing white and then it turned unbearably bright and she was forced to fire in an opposing direction. He jumped up twenty feet, the hydraulics in his legs working overtime, and swung his head in a lazy arc. The light followed the arc down toward the brigade. Men were cut clean (and not-so-clean) in two, limbs disintegrated, and so much more red stained the grounds of the Porrean Elder's home (soon to be renamed the Porrean Elder's _Ruin_).

"Good job Grobyc!" She said as he came down in a crash, creating a small impact crater. Her accent was thick as bricks and it came out as 'ghood jahb'. To this Grobyc only nodded and continued to fire into the ever thickening debris of the battlefield.

"You maniacs t'ink you can stop our revenge?!" She shouted as she blasted the last of her bullets into the fray. Deadening clicks coming from her clunky arm cannons told her that the good fight's end might in fact be close at hand.

"Luccia...?" Grobyc uttered the name in a soft, concerned mechanical voice that sounded as if it was being broadcast through a fat aluminum tube.

"No, it von't end like dis..." The words wouldn't have been audible to anyone but Grobyc (or perhaps Gato). They were the words of the outnumbered, the outgunned...the defeated. Flickers in Grobyc's eyes told her that he was running low on energy. His weapons were running low on ammo. Soon, the Porrean army would be directly on top of them. There was no where to run.

Her formal black dress suit with the large overdone lapels (nearly as flamboyant as Luccia herself) was deeply smudged and caked with dirt. Grime and filth was splashed all along her thin body (a hundred pounds? counting those hunks of metal she slung around for arms maybe). Blood was streaked-soaked-in her prim purple hair; tied back tight against her head, broadening her forehead. Luccia adjusted her glasses again, the light purple of her eyes almost matching her hair as she looked down upon the blood & guts landscape she helped construct. A sigh and a smile escaped her. No, she set them free.

The sounds of explosions and gunfire which had been all but non-stop for over two hours seemed to have faded to an echo.

Grobyc turned to Luccia. He had somehow managed to remain somewhat clean and orderly. There was a big gash in a pant-leg, his elbow-length gloves were drenched red, and-of course-his hands were missing. Aside from that, he remained the same. The lower half of his face and neck that was covered in a red cloth that looked like it had been dipped in someone's intestines-although that was it's natural color-was crooked, but otherwise he was basically fine-for a blue-skinned zombie-looking android of course.

"What-do-we-do...?" Even through the drone of Grobyc's voice, she could still hear her younger brother. That kid who had always seemed stained with blueberries (who now looked very blueberry) and that always looked to her for the answers and was now looking to her again.

The bullet sang into their ears like the cry of some dying, long forgotten bird out in the deepest reaches of the universe. It bore into Luccia's chest, tearing at threaded black silk and the sinews of her heart instantaneously. She was gone in a wisp of blue like some vanquished, wicked hell demon. Another bullet struck Grobyc straight on in the middle of the forehead and he too was gone.

* * *

Elle had dreams. Sometimes-most times really-they were horrific nightmares taking place on endless fields of blood-and-bone riddled dreamscapes. Sometimes they were just words that struck into her skull like railway spikes. They would explode in her brain with both ends poking out either side of her head. They pulsed with the evil life of the living dead; like the pitchforks-or scythes or sickles-of demons. 

One of these damned words came to mind when she saw that flickering flash of light and then her big blue-green eyes rested upon that man with a sense of enthusiasm and exhilaration, with a thick slab of fear all plopped on top like an upside-down wedding cake.

* * *

White lights, white walls, and oddly iridescent blue windows-like the blue was alive-were all she could see when she awoke. Her blurred vision came back to her suddenly and she could recall what happened to some degree. She was in the midst of a losing battle. It wasn't a dream, but perhaps _this_ was. She suddenly grabbed at her chest in recollection. There was nothing. But there was change. She tapped the metal case that covered that part of her chest. This is when she noticed her arms; no longer her large bulky monstrosities, no. They were light, agile & thin and properly proportioned to her body. They were sleek and stream-lined like electric eels. _What's happened to me?_ She thought to herself. 

"Grobyc...!" She screamed the word, looking frantically around the bed-lined white room. It was a kind of hospital room. There were no doors though, just those eerie blue windows and all that white, white on white; white walls, white bed spreads, white pillows. Then she saw him, a big red, black & blue splotch resting in a bed. She could see his chest rising and falling with his respiration. He was alive. There was a strange mark on his forehead that looked like a red ruby. She sighed with relief at the sight of him. His color was welcome in all the somehow menacing brightness.

"Doctor Luccia Allgood..." A booming voice echoed through the room like a thunderclap. Luccia looked for some kind of transmission device, but found nothing but white yet again. It was somehow hidden like how the luster of the light seemed to have no feasible source (the light seemed to simply _ooze_ out of the walls), "We have a proposition that you'd do well to consider."

* * *

"Maou..." Elle said. She had led them into her home. Her father was 'away on business' (getting shit-faced and/or fuckering or the less than likely actually working in the backyard shed/shop two-in-one). Luminous yellow light (coming from a few scant candles, crude and rudimentary electric lights, and the open stove furnace) reflected on the stained wood walls like cream. There was what looked like an alter of candles set beside a picture of who could only have been Elle's mother placed on a desk to the left of the open door in the back of the room they entered into. It could have been a living room or a large study. The room appeared messy, but it was an organized mess; leaflets of official looking paper and documents strewn about in one corner, books and an opened journal stacked vertically into an overflowing case in another corner, and many covered canvases lined around the room, facing the wall like disobedient children. 

Homemade tea started to bubble in the kettle above the flaring wood stove that Elle had just fed fresh logs. Marcy huddled by this with a keen sense that she had never felt warmth so sweet.

"What's 'maou'?" Marcy asked, undoing her curled braids from the top of her head and shaking and wringing out the wetness. Her hair smelt of the grit of a girl who had gone without so much as a splash of water over her head for days on end even though this was not true. The smell intermingled with the tea and alcohol and the lingering must of the books and parchment scattered in the room.

"It means something I once was." He said staring down Elle, penetrating her with his icy and deviant eyes, looking for her reason, her meaning, her purpose, "How do you know that word?"

"I _saw_ it..." Elle started. She had propped her sword, blade down, against a wall and was now pouring them each a cup of her father's homebrew Ash-Tea. Marcy accepted with thanks and sipped at the hotness. She noted the dab of blood soaked into Elle's shirt sleeve and kept silent. Gil simply held the cup in one hand, never taking his eyes from Elle. She took a cup herself and looked down into the light grey of the elixir.

"...In a dream." Gil finished.

"I saw_ you_." She said.

"You saw who I used to be. Perhaps you really didn't see me at all; just a kind of illusion, a dream, a vision." He said. She had seen him as he was long ago, something like the man standing stolid-and yet somehow on the edge of unbridled rage-before her.

* * *

She had seen them arrive. She had known he would come. There were the dreams, the inspirations for everything, and the paintings that seemed to be interlaced somehow and yet they seemed to have no relevance to each other at all; circular wisps of light blue, a key, a jewel, a sword, an egg, paintings within paintings, and beyond the deepest, reddest of all dream-hells, maou, King of the demons. He would come for her. She could also see the end, but knew none of the links, none of the reasons or any of the purposes. Maou would take her and the pain of existence would somehow cease. 

There had been a minor confrontation at this, his actual appearance at her door. Her logistic side, that part of her that believed what she saw but could not explain it, had gone haywire. It did not want to believe what was happening or _when_ it was happening. She was a lone girl in a world that required companionship of some kind. Nothing in the world survived completely alone. That was a trick of witches and devils. The confrontation proved only to validate her righteous belief that her dreams truly meant something and would lead somewhere of importance far past the horizon's edge.

Gil shoved the paper he had been-for the most part unknowingly-holding in the hand that had held the Egg into his pack with a distracted, disinterested glance as Elle had showed them in. None seemed to notice it happen, not even Gil really, but Marcy saw that absentminded look in his eye, as if his mind was still playing catch-up. If either of them had asked what he saw on the paper, he would not have known.

* * *

"Maou, that means what, Demon King or something?" Marcy asked taking another sip of the intoxicating tea. She had never tasted alcohol, knew a few of its smells, but she'd never tasted it. It was inebriating her just so. 

"More or less..." Gil answered. Marcy found herself becoming increasingly aware of her movements, especially her blinking. It was strong tea and it made her warm all over. She also noticed Gil more now. She watched his lips move without really listening to him, was absorbed in his eyes as they switched from Elle to herself.

In the place where previously to Gil's knowledge stood some kind of massive energy compressor, there stood a covered easel. Elle revealed the canvas under the stingy off-white table cloth.

"This is maou." She said. The painting showed an obvious representation of Gil. Skinnier, paler, and with flaring red eyes and behind him stood some kind of demon spirit with multiple, many-jointed arms extruding from it's shoulders and back. Two hands held light blue flame. This representation had its cape still and it brought back chilling, dead memories in Gil's head.

_If you're prepared..._The thought came to him like a flash of lightning.

* * *

Elle showed Gil and Marcy her other works, turning them over one by one with an expression of forlorn at each. She told them that she had painted a good deal of them unconsciously. Many times she would awake from a dream just as she was finishing the final brush stroke. There were many miraculous and bleak depictions throughout the wide tableau of arranged pictograms and various abstract images. There were golden ovals, red gemstones, fiery pits, the red eyed maou, splattered blood, and above and surrounding all was the blue; unbounded, unrestricted blue covering and masking nearly everything. 

"What does it mean?" Marcy uttered the words to the painting in front of her, showing a large, three-lipped mouth opening and sucking the universe within the dark recesses of its blackened innards. It was flanked at the back by a large scabbed crustacean ball.

"It's La-..." Both Gil and Elle started.

It was almost as if that same universe that was being obliterated in that single daunting painting didn't want its name-the name of the demon-to be uttered aloud. As if something were working against them in a way. Gil sensed it in an explosion of alarm, but not soon enough.

Windows shattered, the walls splintered, books and papers tore before their eyes, and thunderous cracks ripped against the silence of the falling snow. Gil rushed Elle, knocking her down to the ground. Marcy watched them, concerned and confused and frozen in the headlights of the barrage. A line of destruction etched its way across a wall behind her, drawing closer. It stopped with a loud pang against the metal of her left glove and sparked a blazing green light.

"_Down!!_" Gil screamed, jerking her into frantic action. She plopped down to her chest, palms flat, facing the hole-riddled entrance-way. Her knees hit hard, but she held in any desire to wince or cry out in pain and instead concentrated on the door.

"The kitchen...!" Elle said as she groped for her blade and simultaneously cringed at the next barrage of bullets off to her right that chewed up the carpet and shredded the painting of maou. She could not grasp what was happening, her face showed not just this confusion, but also a kind of unbelieving anger spread across her mouth, opened less than an inch. Gil dragged her, crouching low, to the back entrance with Marcy just a step ahead of them.

All foreseeable thought in Elle's mind and any semblance Gil might have had of Elle being the Lucca he once knew were swept away in an instant. She was a being of unbound rage like he had seen somewhere before; ferocity born of anger and undeniable hatred. She burned with it. She glowed with it. A line of red light seemed to outline her entire body, her clothes, her sword, and it began to seep into the floorboards under her feet with the rapidity of severe infection. It was the first time Gil noticed her sleeve, almost completely seeped through on one side with blood.

Marcy opened the second door which led into the kitchen after the short hall with the staircases leading up left and right and the potted plants next to the banisters with leaves as large as her head. All she saw was the window and the sink under it. She had no time to take in the dishes piled along the counter in big showy heaps like falling towers or the many bottles of empty and half-empty (mostly just empty) beer stacked on the table in a rather large pyramid. All she had time for was the sink, the small window over it, and the smell of extra strength cleanser from the detergents. The smells assaulted and stung her nose, but not as much as the glass as she burst through the window with her forearms in front of her head. She somersaulted into the wetness of the snow-covered ground out back. The snow was now over four inches deep and her clothes remained ever the less proper for the cold, but that was beside her now. She was no longer cold, she couldn't feel it. She just plucked a good-sized triangle of glass from her collar and it spurted blood in a small spray. Marcy bore down on it tight as she could under clenched teeth. She was past that pain though; she stared into the window, looking at Gil and Elle.

As Marcy plunged through the glass, Gil turned to watch Elle as she burned with her red light. Marcy was astonished at what she was doing. Underneath, she was astonished at Gil for standing there watching. She was ashamed for it, but for that moment she hated him. She bled and he watched her. Jealousy would not occur to her.

"Burn..." Elle seemed to say the word under her breath as though she didn't want anyone to hear. Gil heard it and Marcy saw it form on her thin, pink lips.

* * *

Luccia and Grobyc were busy reloading. Then the little room, the whole house it seemed, lit up bright red. It happened so quick Luccia wasn't sure she saw it, but it did, the windows melted first and _then_ they exploded outwards, followed instantly by a roar and great pillars of flame. The burst of fire threw them both backwards and they skidded across the snow and down onto their backs. The pillars subsided, but continued to eat at the house, flames coming out, flapping upward from the windows like Lucifer's spiky fingers.

* * *

After her spell was finished, the living room/parlor/study was a great burning lightshow. Elle all but collapsed to the ground in a daze when Gil grabbed her by the shoulders and led her to the kitchen. As he did this, he surveyed the damage quickly and looked out the wood frames which had once held windows. There was a man and a woman out there, both stunned and trying to help one another up. The woman-she now wore a single monocle over her left eye-with the devilish purple head of hair, suddenly looked into the ruin of the house and directly at him. Their eyes locked for a moment and Gil knew he would not only see her again, but that he would be forced into killing her. He saw something familiar that she had, the edge just sticking out of a pocket. It reminded him of many things; keys, the Egg, something white and flat, and an old magician acquaintance from the Land of Ago, when he was known as maou, as Magus. His eyes swept back into the house and toward the way Marcy had gone. If he hadn't have looked into the window, he would have missed it, a burning picture, one he hadn't looked at previously. It showed a marvelous round little pink creature with a small tuft of hair atop its head. The creature was mostly head, it seemed, head and mouth and teeth. It smiled a large smile that went from one side of its head to the other, from one side where an arm protruded to the other. He looked to Elle with an almost sad expression. _All the things you've seen._ He thought. Then he tossed her quickly out the window, and even though it pained her to do it, Marcy let go of her wound and caught her gentle as a babe. 

"Hurry...!" Gil said in a voice just above a whisper and he took Elle on one side so that Marcy could resume pressure on her wound. They disappeared into the forest as the day began its steady decline from white to ever darker shades of gray.

* * *

**_Bad timing...!_**

* * *


	12. Chapter 12, History 101

** 1000A.D. **  
**TEMPORAL VORTEX REPORT**

**-REPORT NO. 12-**

**[UNKNOWN TRANSFER RATE, SYSTEMATIC DATA MALFUNCTION  
CRYPTIC TEXT SYNCH RESULT - MULTIDIMENSIONAL TIMELINES** **  
CODE - MAGNESS**  
**CODE EX. - "HISTORY 101"**

Elle awoke. She was forever haunted by the red; dead asleep, in her dreams, in her rage, and most of all when she was fully awake and in complete control.

It wasn't exactly sleeping. She hadn't been rendered unconscious _per say_, she remembered the fire and being tossed out into Marcy's arms, she even remembered the heavy smell of blood coming from one of Marcy's hands, and the singed smell radiating from her self. She remembered being jostled in Gil and Marcy's arms as they ran into the woods and into darkness and night. But she didn't remember this place in the wood or when the silent, odorless, blue-green flame of the small camp fire appeared. Her mind held fractured images of one of them setting the self-inflicted wound on her arm and then folding her sleeve back over it, as if to hide it again (but which of them was it?). She didn't know when Marcy was fixed up either, with what looked like a blue cloth (the same likely covered Elle's own wound, regardless of who had set it) that only the smallest dot of red was seeping through. She didn't like the look Marcy was giving her and she didn't like what it changed into when she finally panicked and decided to speak up.

"Where's Gil?" That look sharpened and Elle could swear that her pupils turned to pinpricks, but then again, Marcy _did_ stare directly into the flame when she spoke.

"Here." His voice said. Gil approached from the shadow of a small tree behind Marcy. _Was he watching us?_ Elle thought.

"That was some display." Marcy said, never looking away, those pupils never re-expanded. In fact, they almost looked as though they contracted even further until it was hard to see the black at all. Then it was as if she sensed it herself, and she closed her eyes. Marcy wanted to shake the feelings out of her head. She was in control and these feelings didn't make sense to her, "Ipso facto."

Gil turned to her with eyebrow raised in question, but just as quickly lowered it and didn't bother to ask. He felt that the answer had to do with her dream in the forest and he knew it was true.

"Magic-Oh..." Elle responded, looking up into the face of the man she had first known as maou, and now knew as Gil.

They were in the thick of the forest, someplace deep within the dense confines of the eastern Guardia Forest. The sky was a dark smear of overcast gray, but the moon could be seen as a dim sort of glow that was trying-and failing-to break through the cloud that spanned over the entire sweep of the sky. There was no snow in their place around the flame and what snow there was, was scarce and mostly upon the branches of the trees around their encampment. Marcy sat with her knees curled up to her chin, her arms folded over them, and her eyes still closed. Elle had her head propped up against Gil's pack, beside which lay his weapons and her sword. She moved the bag aside and began to sit up when a dizzy spell struck her. So instead, she decided to lie on her stomach, hands folded at her chin as she looked back and forth between Marcy, who wouldn't return her gaze, and Gil, who seemed lost in the fire or some old memory. He was lost in both and neither at the same time.

"Magico..." He finally said, "...its one whole word."

The girls looked at him as if studying his words, his face, his eyes...

They had the same exact thing on their minds. For neither of them was it the first time. Elle had pondered it over her painting. Marcy had wondered it many times and had even spoken aloud her wonderings more than once since meeting Gil. They said it at the same time, neither one really hearing the other, "Who are you?"

He stood up at the words, completely unsurprised at their question. He had felt it coming-_again_ in Marcy's case-for a while. Perhaps it's simply something someone says when they meet someone new. He no more thought this than he believed it.

Again they spoke at the same time, but using different words with the same meaning behind them.

"Gil...?" Marcy said this, his new name.

"Maou...?" Elle said this, an old name, more of a title really, used to frighten the enemies of the Mystics. Were they his enemies as well? He could no longer knew, perhaps could no longer distinguish.

"Please, Elle, spare me that ghost. Just for now at least." He said. Something in his eye told Elle that he was beyond serious, there was truth in that dark eye, encased in the shadows of the night. She lowered her head in a brief show of unpracticed apology.

"But the less we know the more danger we're in." Marcy spoke up. He looked at her; his eyes seemed to pulse at her words. He was concerned for them in a way he hadn't felt for anyone for a very, very long time.

"Are you so sure?" He asked. _Perhaps the less you know the better off you are._ He thought but did not say. Something forced that thought down into his chest like buried treasure and packed the dirt above it and stamped and stamped, "No...I suppose you're right..."

Marcy crossed her legs, mimicking Gil's former position. Gil himself moved farther off, toward the small tree and the comfort of the shadow. He put his hand in this shadow, wondering if he would be swept off again, like that shadow could be some kind of black worm hole. He remained.

"I cannot talk of maou right now." Elle seemed disappointed, but understanding at this, "For one, it is not a time I enjoy discussing, or remembering much for that matter. It was a long time ago and I was a different person then. That part is complicated in ways other parts are not, and there is no time for such complications. Not here, not now. For another, if you truly wish to know maou, you must know who maou was before. What created maou and, ultimately, what destroyed maou..."

* * *

There was once a mighty kingdom called Zeal; formed when mankind became unified after the fall of the mysterious Other Race. It was ruled by a mighty King and his beautiful Queen. When they were married, they were very much in love. It was most obvious to everyone. When the King and Queen of such a kingdom are happy, the kingdom prospers greatly. Zeal benefited from their love extremely. The people looked upon them as divine guardian angels sent to rid them of their poverties and troubles. In short time, they did, and the world of Zeal was utopia and bliss. Many discoveries were made in the sciences as well as the religions and, most importantly, in dreams.

Of course, this great era of bliss followed with great disaster. Oncoming generations of people would wonder and brood about the obviousness of that course. The disaster-the first of what would be many-came quickly, without warning, but it would seem to them as though it played its part as a great balancer. The scales began to tip and sway.

The King was killed.

A mining accident, it claimed seven lives in addition to the King. This was long after the raising of the Zeal continent to the skies, longer still after the Magical & spiritual progression gained from the crimson shard of then unknown origin, after the rediscovery of the ancient Dreamstone for which the mining expedition was planned, after the birth of first their beautiful and talented girl-whom the Queen began to resent more and more with each passing day-and second, their little boy-whom may or may not have been a result of the Queen's resentment-and right before the discovery of that dreadful demon who's name

(_Lavos_)

Gil wished not to speak for fear of summoning it unto the world again.

The Queen grieved with her children for eight days-one day for every life lost, as was customary-before she banished the workers to be bound to the earth below forever. She did this even against the consultation of the three Gurus. She did this with a head not clouded, not grieving, but _mad_.

* * *

"What part did you play in all of that?" Marcy suddenly spoke up, just as suddenly regretting her interruption. Gil didn't seem to notice. His answer was just a continuation; he did not resent her question or her intrusion into his memory. He did not look back to either of them. Hand still held steadfast in that small tree's shadow, yet, still he remained.

"I was the Prince." He continued as if never interrupted at all, "My blood was never questioned outright, not on their lips, no, not if they wished to avoid the Queen's post-grieving anger; that's what the vast majority of them forced themselves to believe it was. No, although their minds screamed it. Their lips dared barely whisper things in dark corners with their backs turned."

Gil's shoulders rose and then lowered at this point, in what looked like, but what was not, a sigh.

"I suppose I do not, never did, blame them. The Queen was insane, only partially driven by the power of the demon and of the passing of my father. But I, the Prince, held no power they could see. Any power seemed so late in coming, so latent, so hidden; so unlike my sister the Princess, who would have made so much greater a Queen."

He turned to them at this, eyes held onto the firelight; eyes swimming in tears they did not know he was holding back. To Elle and Marcy those eyes simply glowed in the blue-green shine of the Magical flame.

* * *

It was that fact about the Princess, as unspoken as the people's doubts of the Prince, that truly began the Queen's drop into insanity. The Gurus who tested her hid the fact that the Princess was potentially much more powerful than even the Queen. The Queen did not need them to tell her though, she knew it, and when she procured their results for herself, that thought became concrete, and that bit of insanity grew like a wall. That wall felt like protection, but it was not, it was isolation and it held her in. Everything was held in; all the pain, the anguish, the torture, the jealousy and the hate.

But she was the Queen. She did not go about things by maiming, killing and destroying. In that way, she would have looked cruel. To any queen-hell _any_ woman, _all_ rulers, nearly _anyone_-image is everything. Such feelings must be hidden, such things needed walls, and such little girls needed chains tied tightly around them. Those chains would serve as part leash and part noose.

The demon, and the power they drew from the demon, using the Dreamstone, held the kingdom of Zeal back in its state of perpetual tranquility. The King's death was not forgotten, but it was as if a thin haze wrapped itself around such thoughts, putting them away like fading dreams. This strange and ultimately unnoticed phenomenon-unnoticed by all but the Gurus and the Queen's children-occurred not just for the King's death, but for death itself.

The Dreamstone brought with it the bearers of Zeal's greatest science; Philosophy, the religion of knowledge and the lack of knowledge and the yearning of knowledge, ultimate reality and eternal possibility. Strange little creatures with large oval eyes and bulbous heads propped on little jumpy bodies. They were Masa, the curious youth, Mune, his older brother, and Doreen, the eldest and most theoretical of the three. They were a bizarre set, but they proved to be important in the vast scheme of things; magical beings that seemed to come into being with the very forging of the Dreamstone.

Yet they were there all along, hiding on the winds.

* * *

Her brother Grobyc was standing steadfast, awaiting further orders. She was staring into the smoldering house before them. She took a handkerchief out of one of the many pockets her new attire included and wiped some of the soot from her face, missing just a smudge of the black stuff from under each eye, making her look like she was going out for

(_war_)

some kind of football team. This was not a mistake though, it lessened the glare of the snow and even though it was dark, she knew her time here would last longer than just this night.

"You did vell." She said to him. He nodded at this, but his brow showed his inner turmoil at his failings, "Dere vas not'ing more ve could do. Ve must jus' do bedder nex' dime, understood?"

"Yes."

Again she was reminded of her brother, just two years younger than she and somehow so much more innocent and inexperienced. This was mostly due to their upbringing. Their father had died young, leaving his wife with a little girl and another still baking in the oven. Luccia had some experience with their father. He was a strict man, who believed not only in physical punishment, but in his own prime golden rule; thou shall be greater than the gods or thou shall be so much more dust in the wind. He pushed himself, and his daughter when he was around, to do not just his best, but the best of all. It was something Luccia had no trouble accepting, even when he was gone, if not especially. This of course, left her often unsatisfied with every accomplishment and every achievement. She would wonder endlessly about her decisions and what actions her father would have taken in similar situations. In the deepest basement of her mind, the part she kept hidden and wouldn't accept as being there at all, she wondered if he would be proud of her, if anything she was doing was enough.

Her brother, Grobyc, had no such experience with their father; he grew in a world where such a man _was_ just so much dust in the wind. Luccia told him about their father of course, their mother chose to forget him, but Grobyc felt little for the dead man, and more for his sister. He was proud of his sister and all of the things she had done. He couldn't imagine someone who would feel otherwise for any good reason. He was her sanity and her grounding. His feelings for his sister stemmed mostly from their mother who would often tell him to look after her and make sure she didn't get herself into trouble. Their mother said this even though Luccia was the elder of the two because she saw that reflection in Luccia. Luccia reminded her of her stubborn late husband.

By the time their mother passed away, Luccia was just out of school, riding a wave of scientific glamour and fame, and Grobyc had just enlisted in the Guardian Army. He would tell her about his misgivings regarding Guardia's involvement with the Mystics and the diplomatic relations with Porre over dinner at their parents' house, which they then shared. She would tell him about her advances in various fields: robotics, mechanics, advanced weaponry, human biology, mystic biology, monster biology, and chemistry among a few other branching sciences. Luccia agreed that Guardia was doing a poor job and Grobyc would joke that the two of them could run things more smoothly.

One of Luccia's main concerns was Lucca and Taban Ashtear, the very heads of the science department of Guardia. They basically founded every known branch of scientific study and that was a great agitation to Luccia. She was often insulted when someone would ask whether she was a namesake to the well proclaimed Ashtear daughter. It was as if no one had heard of the word 'coincidence'. Although, being one of a very small group of scientific minds, Luccia eventually found herself working under the great Lucca. Although Lucca liked it better when people referred to them as partners, Luccia's loathing still grew. There was no truth to it, but she felt as though Lucca was patronizing her and eventually she left their shared corridor of Guardia Castle in a heated argument that on the surface was about the rights of the deceased and the morality of playing God.

After their professional separation-which ended rather unprofessionally-Lucca Ashtear's work seemed to degrade where Luccia Allgood's only blossomed. Grobyc Allgood rose in the ranks of a governmental system he held with little regard. Soon after Grobyc would be involved in a tragic accident that was largely overlooked by Guardian officials and that would stand as the last straw in Luccia Allgood's vehemence. She pleaded with the heads of Guardia to send troops into Porre and finally put them in their place, but the Guardians simply said there wasn't enough proof, that Porre righteously denied the rumors that their own Sniper Squad had taken him out and that her claims about the government were more than a little slanderous. In the end, they let her off with a warning, but she yet again stormed out, this time feeling more than a little patronized.

She took more than the law into her own hands; she fixed her brother, whom all doctors said was unfixable. The two of them-Luccia Allgood, doctorate removed and her now mostly android brother, Grobyc-started with Porre's famous Sniper Squad. The ensuing battle against their top marksman, the devilishly good-looking pretty-boy Norris Baker, ended mostly in their favor. Norris was dead, killed with a bullet from Grobyc's own gun, but not before he got off his own shots at Luccia, taking spraying chunks from both of her shoulders. She had screamed in galvanizing frustration.

Grobyc had easily stopped the bleeding, she had updated his memory software and included as much medical practice as she could cram in, even though he had a lot of front line medical understanding, it was mostly for sloppy field patch-ups. Now he worked and stitched with the fluidity of a doctor with years of experience, only without the twitchy arthritis-laden fingers that normally brought about. It took much longer for her to guide Grobyc through the creation of her new mechanical android arms because the nerves leading into her arms were beyond repair. But it was okay because she had the time and the patience.

Even though Porre accused Guardia of going against their shared Anti-Conflict Act, and Guardia denied it, saying it was outside influence, the war was starting. Guardia surely would have strung the good doctor up, but unfortunately she'd gone under their radar. After leaving the Guardian Research Institute, she had taken her work into the dank dungeons found in a long forgotten Cathedral in an even longer forgotten forest, guarded by her great collaborated creation, NeoFio.

Later, she decided (and Grobyc followed her) that their efforts to join Guardia and Porre in warfare were not moving swiftly enough and that she and Grobyc would have to speed things up. During that battle, the Elder of Porre was killed in front of his relatives as Luccia bellowed for the victory of Guardia. The red-stained grounds of the Elder's home would be renamed the Porrean Elder's Ruin and the only thing ever built there again was a grave that was later replaced by a monument, that of course eventually eroded and faded to sand and dust, and not much more could be said for the bones buried beneath.

"Dose people, dose ARTS or vhutever dey called demselves, gave a good enough clue as do vere dey could be 'eaded."

* * *

His strange story was cutting into them and memories were pouring out like reopened wounds that really had been only temporarily scabbed over due to their current radical situations. Elle began to think of her own mother, how she used to tell her those bedtime stories she liked, the ones with the ogres and the wizards. She even remembered how her father would show her his little toy-like inventions; whirly-gigs and screwy little tops he'd make for her from leftover pieces of scrap metal and wood. That was before he started the heavy drinking, before her mother died. She couldn't think coherently afterwards. Her mother was gone, no blame could be laid there, but her father Taban, that was another story completely. Just as Elle began to turn away from him, he too began to turn away from his work; the work Elle blamed for her mother, Lara's death. He sank into drink and they both sank into solemn and self-secluded depression.

Marcy, who never knew her father, and remembered so little of her mother, thought instead of her brother, ten years her elder. He sang to her whenever she cried out from being hurt and whenever she had trouble sleeping. His songs were especially soothing when she awoke from the bad dreams; the ones about the ogres and the wizards. He was always there, hushing her in his gentle voice, and reminded her that she was his sister the little princess. But then he was gone. Like all thoughts of her brother, they inevitably wound up back on that same fact. She was miles away from him, miles away from any _possible_ location he could be, it seemed. She was torn from him again. All Marcy had was this deep feeling that this man, now spilling his guts out to two girls he barely knew (little did she know, Gil supposed he knew them fairly well indeed, and wasn't far off), had the answers. The feeling that told her to go with him and all would figure itself out, all was as it should be because he knew what he was doing and he was finding his sister somehow and somehow she'd find her brother along the way. The hands of fate, the will of God, the wheel of ka, the turning cogs of time, whatever you called it, it was there, less a corporal presence and more a single conscious sensation.

Something about what Gil had just said struck her suddenly. It had to do with the wind. Everything rode on that wind. Everything seemed to serve the wind. That wind that the large black bird-she was sure it represented Gil-seemed to drift along on effortlessly. But all was dead and death, even reflecting in that dream bird's eyes. But all was life and living at the same time, taunting her like an unknown choice of unmarked doors that lead to Hell or Purgatory or Heaven. Were the doors marked this time? Was there any of that gold engraving? Or was she just being pulled and pushed along by the wind?

* * *

"The Black Wind...?" Marcy asked, this time not regretting, this time she felt as though she were right. He was not shocked out of his memory, but he turned toward Elle, picked up his pack and sat down cross-legged between them again. He opened it just enough to fit his hand inside and he touched one of the objects there; the one that most easily made him remember this portion of his past, his sister, and the Black Wind.

"Yes, the Black Wind." He said with his gaze once more lost in flame, "I suppose I spoke of it in my daze on the way to the other Lucca's."

Elle looked down at this, again considering that she wasn't the only one of her that could exist.

Marcy nodded and said, "I think I had a dream about it."

"Yes, I suppose you did. Those touched by it are indeed haunted by it; awake, asleep, dreaming, dead...In a way, that is what it does and what it is for. It has been with me for as long as I remember. It was always with maou and it was with the Prince even when he was young and he knew little of the world and the Wind."

"What is the Black Wind?" Elle spoke up.

"It is...not entirely bound by definition. The Black Wind is many things. It is death and it is premonition. It _is_ the dead. It is who must die. It is a link or a change. Some people have the talent to see it, to interpret it, to know it." He said these things as he took the object out. Marcy had seen it before, tumbling out of the hand of a dead girl who had been close to her age, "But to truly know it, is to know what it brings and what it means to those who it howls for. Who it wants and what it desires. It's hard to explain..."

* * *

Her words drifted serine and lovely, like the girl herself seemed to drift in her purple robe. A small blue light began to emerge between her hands, cupped in front of her. The look of concentration was immediately replaced with a brilliant and joyous smile, "I'm doing it!" She said, and just as immediately the light was rubbed out of existence. The smile replaced by a slight scowl.

"You nearly had it that time." The old man said from one side of the circular room. There was a little boy on the opposite side, slowly petting the kitten in his lap and watching the girl with a smile in his eye.

She began again, this time the light came easier and fingernail size spikes of blue flame began at the edges, curling up. Her eyes widened for a moment and then were replaced with her former look of prime focus. The flames licked a little higher.

All was blown out suddenly as the large double doors swung into the room with so much force that the handles stabbed themselves into the walls. The crash startled everyone but the old man out of their idyllic moment. Even the kitten was disturbed out of its sleep. It began to mew and was immediately interrupted.

"Just _what_ is going on in here...?" The woman who stormed in said. The woman wore a similar robe as the girl-even the little boy wore that same purple color. If she were ten years younger, the only difference would have been a couple inches less in height and a couple more in width to the woman and the fact that she wore her long light blue hair-which the boy also shared with them, only cut shorter-up.

"Mother...! I was just...practicing my Magic, Guru Gasper and Janus here, were watching." Schala replied. The little boy's brow had lowered at the very entrance of the Queen of Zeal, but she did not notice it-or_him_-at all. Gasper's eyes were hidden under the shadow of his hat as per usual; underneath they gazed critically over the face of the Queen, hoping again for signs of sickness and seeing none besides that mad look that was nearly plastered there at all times.

"Oh, I _know_ what you were doing." She said in a low, calm voice, "That was some sort of attacking spell, was it not?"

"Well now, not necessarily..." The old man, Gasper, started to say.

"Guru Gasper..." The Queen stated without much emphasis. Her voice drained the weight out of his voice and he continued at just a notch above a whisper.

"All fire spells have secondary uses such as..."

"Yes, mother, you're right." The girl stepped over his mutterings. Underneath his hat, Gasper shifted his eyes carefully to the young Princess of Zeal. She is sometimes much wiser than I. He thought. The boy's upper lip twitched involuntarily. His mind was lost in a spiraling tempest he could not control.

"How many times must I tell you?" The Queen said, "You have no need for those types of spells."

"Yes, mother."

"Oh, 'yes, mother' this, and 'yes, mother' that." The Queen said in the distracted, quick, spouting voice of a long perfected speech that began to rise somewhere close to fury, "Do not 'yes, mother' me anymore, just do as I have told you. _Honestly_, it makes people think and wonder when the Princess begins to learn spells such as those. 'What need has the Princess for such spells?' they'd say. They'd begin to doubt my leadership because of these kinds of miniscule and unimportant things. Do you know what it means to have your subjects doubt you, Schala?"

She had to bite back another 'yes, mother' and said instead, "I know." She sighed oh so slightly, "I do not need to know such spells for to know them is to have doubt in the peace over the people and lack of faith in the guards which protect Zeal."

A curt half nod at the practiced and memorized line and the Queen went on, "Now, instead, continue to practice your Magic stabilization and energy containment spells." The boy's brow flattened, and his lip dared not twitch, feeling the impending gaze of the one formally and simply called mother, "Janus." She said in plain acknowledgement.

"Queen-mother..." He said in the same dull tone, with no hint of mockery. It was quick and sharp like the prick of a needle. Then she left, almost as soon and as quickly as she had come, like a hurricane, off to destroy someone else's home or tear someone else down.

Gasper tipped his hat from behind, scratching his skull back there, with a nervous half-hearted smile that Princess Schala returned, "Well now, I'm sure I have somewhere else I need to be..." And then it was just the two, plus the Prince's kitten of course.

"Doesn't_Father_ lead Zeal?" The Prince said and the hurt and the doubt in his mind were like acid. But the kitten licked his hand and he could not force the frown to stay any longer.

"Yes, Janus, but you know how important public perception is to her." She had held onto her own frown after Gasper left, but at the sight of Janus's leaving, she too could not force it to stay.

"But why is that so important, Schala?" He scratched the kitten behind its ear, as it liked.

She did not answer immediately. The room they were in was opposite their rooms in the great Zeal Palace. One day, it would be turned into a room of worship. One day there would be a large idol of a machine, forged of a rare red rock, sitting there in the middle of that round room. One day the power of that idol would get out of control. One day, it would all go tumbling down from the sky like a meteor shower. Right then though, Schala moved to the open balcony that looked down upon the rest of the main Zeal continent, floating high up in the heavens. Normally it was quite a sight, especially at night, with the hushed stars gazing down upon the land like an intricate blanket of black, sparkling ocean, the many palace towns and scholarly institutes spread out like glimmering sandcastles, waiting to be swept away in the incoming tide. Recently though, it was a very foggy place, but it wasn't really fog. They were just low clouds, filled with precipitation, and everything they touched became slick with moisture. All was engulfed with these clouds but the great Zeal Palace, high above everything, the center of the universe, atop the great spike of a mountain often referred to as, of course, Mount Zeal. It took several molecular transporters just to reach the summit where the Palace stood. The transporters made people feel slightly uncomfortable, and all was quite all right with the royal family. The less people wanted up to the Palace, the better, was the Queen's motto. Princess Schala looked down into these clouds and a flicker of lightning lit the sky to the east and she looked in that direction for a moment and sighed. Then she unknowingly predicted the future of the kingdom.

"Because Janus, she cannot completely control the people or their perceptions and that is dangerous to her role as Queen. I'm sure she'd be much more satisfied with all of them locked away or dead...Or, no, I suppose that wouldn't do...She'd be happy with all of them numb and ignorant...She'd be perfectly content with all of them under a deep sleep."

After a brief moment of silence that wouldn't be cut by the crackle of thunder coming from outside, she forced a smile that passed for genuine to her brother, ruffled his hair, and retired to her bedroom, leaving him to contemplate the future with his kitten.

"What's going to happen, Alfador?" He asked. He looked out the balcony, which, when the great machine dominated the room, would be walled up, and down toward the thundering black clouds. The wind rose up and whistled into the circular room, swelling and transforming into a ferocious screaming roar. He ran from it, carrying Alfador in his arms tight, but it followed him down the hall, and it continued to trail after him in the main atrium and straight up the stairs to his room. It followed in the crooks and corners of his mind and that night the young Prince slept so badly he almost wet the bed.

* * *

"That was one of the first times in that life the Black Wind haunted me. That was not long before the accident in the Ocean Mine with the Prince's father and the others who died." Gil said and sighed as he looked from his Amulet to the fire. Elle and Marcy for the first time in what seemed like hours looked around. The night was still upon them, their joints still fresh, and the sounds of the night were still just as eerily silent. The moon was approaching in the east. The clouds in that direction were tapered off and there was no resistance against the glaring moonlight.

"What...What's happened?" Marcy asked, getting up and looking into the eastern sky, "The moon...it's..."

"Reversed...?" Elle asked, unsure how to put what she saw into correct words, "The moon's gone backward in the sky!"

Gil looked up into the sky and sure enough, the moon was only just rising, but when they started, it had been directly above them, trying-but failing-to burn through the clouds, "Sometimes, when such tales are told, the world becomes _thinner_; reason and the rules of the universe become fragile and bend unto the power of such accounts. I've noted this event especially upon speaking at length of the Black Wind."

"Sometimes it felt like that when my brother would sing to me when I was younger." Marcy said, still looking up into the moon. It was like the moon she had grown up with, but she realized that it was in fact as foreign to her as this new girl, Elle, was. She was a version of the Miss Lucca Ashtear that had built that lumbering mech Gato, designed the chemical drug that had generated euphoria in Gil, and most importantly, that Miss Ashtear whom had given Gil that Egg that sent them through a field of timestreams and into this one to meet, of all people, her doppelganger. Like Elle, this moon wasn't her moon, it hadn't hung up there, watching over her as she grew up and she hadn't prayed to it-she prayed to so many things-in hopes to find what she sought; it was so like a stranger in a strange land. She felt lost in it all.

"Yes, it has been said to occur through music as well. Music, as well as art, and the act of storytelling have all long been forms of telling history, of telling the future and the present about the past. They are forms of time travel." Gil said, the memory of Belthasar's teachings-nearly his exact words-had never left, it seemed. Something about it struck him as odd, chaotic thoughts drowned his mind.

_(The past is calling.)_

_(Next stop, all aboard!)_

_(Princess Pendant...)_

_(Time to find a body...)_

_(TIME...TIME...TIME)_

_(HOPE...HOPE...HOPE)_

He tried to fight them away, not understanding their importance or their significance to come, "There...There are people who say that..."

He didn't need to fight them any longer after that word. The girls had been concentrating on his words, concerned with the way he shook his head as if dispelling some disquieting image or thought in his mind. One last thought...

_(DEATH...DEATH...DEATH)_

Then a powerful forced ripped them away from each other and out of their off-centered state-of-mind and into an off-centered state-of-being. The wood pile was smothered and all was glowing in the moonlight.

* * *

Elle heard her back pop when she was blown backward from the concussive blast and dirt was shoved into her face, leaving her eyes prickling in pain. Marcy was hit the hardest and was flung back into the surrounding trees like a paper doll. Gil's eyes were dazzled by the brilliant light that exploded in front of him. The high-intensity flash grenade had done its job, incapacitating each of them, in different ways, but it also flung them about in separate directions. Marcy would not awaken for a full minute. Elle took only a few seconds. Gil, least effected, was able to move instantaneously.

He saw what he was looking for in a small instant that was really the only window he would have gotten; two blazing eyes, striking out against the darkness of the forest around them and even the blurredness of Gil's vision. Then it was easier because the firing began. Whip-cracks of sound, like they each had heard in the attack upon Elle's house hours before, rang out in the silence. He heard the fluttering impacts as they hit the bark of nearby trees.

* * *

Elle got up, saw the eyes, saw the sparks of the guns lighting up the faces and bodies of people she had never seen before, who, for no reason at all were out to kill her. Her hands swept the ground, searching. She could not determine how far the explosion had blown her back. Her eyes still stung red with grit. She tried to blink past it repeatedly to no avail. A bullet from one of the weapons of the people she didn't know whisked by her ear, clipping her right earlobe and producing a good, piercing scream. More bullets followed in the direction of her voice.

* * *

Marcy was thrown immediately into a dreamscape; a world of grey with no boundaries, no smells, no taste. There was an unpleasant damp quality to this world, as if when she inhaled, her lips, her tongue, and her throat were all slicked with some kind of thick wetness that threatened to suffocate her. She breathed in deeply.

_Follow and die!_ A voice shouted at her, in her mind. It was a familiar voice, on the edge of a rasp. It was Gil's voice, and yet, it wasn't. A human shape appeared before her, materializing as if there were a fine haze of fog to come out of where there was nothing. It was dark. It seemed to have a cape billowing behind it. It seemed to whisk about in a wind that turned to clouds and cycled to thunderheads. The world around her rumbled in what sounded and felt like an earthquake that assaulted her ears.

The feeling awoke her; the feeling that the world around her was crumbling apart under her. She could not hear the thundering sounds that filled the air. The flash grenade had been too loud and too close and it had temporarily taken most of her hearing. Everything sounded like echoes being filtered underwater over hundreds of leagues that only the middle of her head was receiving in the slightest. But she could taste it; that terribly bitter, burnt taste, like copper. And she could see everything as if the clearest, bright, summer sun was blinding in front of her eyes. Shadows spiked out from the source, closer to their campfire.

There, Gil stood; hand in the direction of the eyes he had seen, head turned aside. A great ball of crackling energy grew and glowed brightly in front of his hand, sending cables of lightning into the forest. He was gathering Elle, as she was gathering their things, with his other arm. The lightning whipped and snapped out of control, striking at various trees in its path of righteous heaven-light.

* * *

He absolutely _hated_ to run. He hated even more being so stupid and unprepared. He hadn't expected it. His story had gone on absolutely too long, but in the end he hadn't been aware. He got caught up in the memories. He hated to run, and it seemed like that was all he was capable of these days.

The lightning bolt had been more light show than electrical onslaught; meant to blind more than injure, that's why it had gotten out of hand. But in that way, it served its purpose, knocking down several moss-covered trees into the path of their pursuers.

_To run is better than to die._ He thought briefly as he slapped past a few low pine branches. The girls were ahead of him, both keenly ready now. Elle's blade drawn and Marcy's fists were almost always raised. He would have told them it was a waste, but why not be on their toes this once? He wasn't doing his job. These girls depended on him to see them through. _What?_

Guardia Castle came into view before he could think those things over. The girls waited patiently at an overhanging ridge that led up to the large Guardian Mountain that lay just at the back of the castle. They would have to climb a ways from this side; first up the larger ridge that led to the castle wall and then up the castle wall itself.

"This is the place." Elle said, bordering on a question.

"How do we get in?" Marcy asked when Gil finally caught up and looked up at the dark tower that stood before them. The moon had gone down and the shadows filled and swallowed all the many cracks and corners of the castle.

"I know a way." Gil responded.

* * *

"Damn dem!" Luccia exclaimed after a quick patch-up repair of Grobyc. Circuits had been overloaded by Gil's low-powered lightning attack. She had to reroute to a subsidiary back-up power for the time being. She also made sure to have his core power circuits absorb all future incoming current. She felt like a patented ignoramus for not thinking ahead, but she had brushed aside the ARTS's warnings of Magic.

Next time she would have to attack more indirectly. She was a scientist for god's sake; it was time for her to start thinking like one. A deliciously pestilent idea came to her and the corners of her mouth upturned in a devilish smile.

* * *

First Gil came in, followed by a shaky Marcy and Elle. He touched down on the hard stone floor with ease. The girls stumbled drunken down from the window's ledge. It was the first time either had flown, even if it were a 'simple distance' as Gil had put it. The room smelt heavily of sweetness and earth, bowls of flowery, wooden potpourri saturated the air. The room was plain, but even aside from the smell it was most obviously a girl's room. The sheets on the bed were a faded pink, a single stuffed something sat in the corner of a large cherry wood desk, and the matching drawers were inlaid with heart & vine decoration.

"What room is this?" Marcy asked half-knowing.

"This isn't where I think it is, is it?" Elle asked three-fourths sure.

"The room of Guardia's Princess..." Gil said knowing full-well.

"What are we doing here exactly?" Elle asked. Marcy looked on wondering just as much as Elle.

"She has something I need."

"Where would she have put it?" Marcy asked, looking around the room and wanting ever more to get out of the room and out of the castle no matter how much flying or running from unknowns was needed.

"Around her neck..." He looked at Marcy's surprised face. Elle knew immediately what it must have been; she had seen it on the Princess's person before, not long ago at the Millennial Fair. She had seen it before that in one of her own paintings and of course, before that, in one of her red dreams; the Pendent, "But for now..."

* * *

The young Prince Janus paced about his room, distraught with the horrible images of the dreams he had been having ever since that day when the Wind began to haunt him. The dreaded Mammon Machine had had it's time in that room now. It sapped the people of their consciousness and sent them into deep dream states. Technology began to reign once again and there was a false feeling of peace among the people. A sense that the peace was forced, that the people overlooked the travesties going on under their noses, was perceived by a very select few. More and more the Queen bound her people to the earth below, although more and more these dealings were untold to the public. The three Gurus were uneasy with the Queen's contact with the Mammon Machine and thusly, to Lavos, the demon creature dwelling below. Princess Schala was to control and focus these meetings with her mother and Lavos. The Queen became more powerful absorbing the power the Mammon Machine gave off, but as her power increased, her psychosis became more unstable. She had recently had the Mammon Machine moved closer to Lavos, into the sea, to draw power more fluidly. The construction of the Ocean Palace, the Mammon Machine's said residency in the sea, proved more deadly than the Dreamstone mining accident that took eight lives including the King's. No one made the connection; the deaths were concealed from the people. Only the royalty and the Gurus knew anything that really happened under those waters and only they feared what was going to happen when the Mammon Machine was used there, so close to Lavos, it was as if their power would kiss.

Alfador sat watching him walk circles near his bed. The cat mewed once at its master. Janus stopped abruptly and looked down to the kitten, his only friend, and said, "I don't know what to do Alfador...I worry-"

He heard the door to his room open and someone advanced up the steps. At the sight of her hair, he let out a small sigh of relief. He was probably the only person who could tell the difference from the Queen and the Princess just from their respective top inches.

"Schala...!!" He said enthused, but the smile on his face seemed tired and weak.

"Janus, is something wrong?" She had come to check up on him. There was little time those days they got to spend together because of the Queen.

"The Black Wind..." Janus said and his face turned downward.

"You feel it too?" She said and looked to that place his face turned to, as if she would be able to see into him by seeing what he saw, "Don't worry, it'll be alright." It was a lie; she felt the death coming just as easily as he. She bent down and pet Alfador and the cat purred and Schala looked back to Janus and the smile drained from her face and her look became serious again, "Now, hold onto this."

She took something small that fit in her hand from the insides of her robe and held it out for him to take.

"What is it?" He asked as he took the small thing and examined it closely. Alfador began to rub against his leg and meow, wanting to see the shiny object for himself.

"It's a kind of amulet. If something should happen, it will protect you." She told him and with her own weak smile added, "I wish I could be with you always...But mother has other plans."

"She's NOT our mother!" His voice rose to a near shout and shamed with himself, he added at near-whisper, "She looks like mother, but inside she has changed."

There was a long pause as Schala debated this once again, this time, her own brother had told her that which she knew, deep down, but did not accept completely. He seemed to get through to her best, most of the time, "Still, I can't...Janus...I'm sorr-."

"Highness...!" A young woman, dressed in flamboyant, flowing servant's garb, interrupted from the steps, "The Queen asks for your immediate presence at the Ocean Palace."

"Alright..." She told the woman and turned to her brother, "Well, Janus...I'll be going."

* * *

"That's where you got that Amulet?" Marcy asked.

"Yes." Gil said to her. The girls had taken place sitting on the Princess's bed. Gil sat with his back to the fireplace that was heating the room.

"What did it do when something happened? Did it protect you?" Elle asked her own questions.

"Yes and no, but that's a different story, involving maou..." He said. He turned slowly toward the doorway of the room, "Someone's coming."

* * *

"I don't care _what_ the Chancellor told you!" It was her full fury; nothing could hold her back this time. Her father had sunk too low. It seemed that no matter what happened, she was to blame. There was nothing she could do for him. The Chancellor was the only one he would trust. That pathetic little slime-ball of a man with his heavy, long white beard that bobbed above his belly whenever he talked, his large, clammy hands, and his slanted, shifty eyes that made her think he was always thinking something bad, or dirty.

_...Or evil._ A voice whispered in her mind. It was the voice of her mother, that sweet, gentle, loving voice that never failed to fill her with confidence. But this time it sounded frightened, small, as if it was her mother's voice when her mother was young, long before she had a child. It made her uneasy when that voice spoke like that.

But she wasn't thinking about that then. Her anger wouldn't be sidetracked. Her father, King of Guardia, had said some rather tasteless falsities about her and some boy he said she had been seen with. This was utterly one of the most absurd things Princess Nadia had ever heard in her entire life. She had not left the Palace in over a week and when last she did, she spoke to no one.

"Oh, my dear girl, what reason would the Chancellor have to lie?" The King asked her, "We all _know_ you leave the castle. Everyone _knows_ it."

"I really can't _believe_ you sometimes father." She shook her head as if to demonstrate her disbelief.

"We cannot have such things circulating among the people, rumor or not." The King said to her.

"Then stop the one starting them in the first place father..." She realized just then that she tended to refer to him as father more often the angrier he got her, "Stop the Chancellor!"

"I really cannot believe you would think such..."

"Fine, forget it!" She said. She stormed off, hands flung upward (_very dramatic_ she would think later, disappointed with herself in the way only a teenager can be), up the stairs to the right of the throne room; the stairs that eventually led to her room, "Forget I said_anything_!"

The further up the stairs she got, the less angry she was, and the more tired she became. She felt frustrated more than anything. She never had anything proper to say to any of the things the Chancellor or her father had to say against her. She just wanted to get to her window and think and wish for whatever she felt was supposed to happen to her to happen now.

She opened the door.

* * *

He grabbed her with a swift, practiced motion from behind and held the blade of his sickle to her bare throat. Her mouth dropped open wide and immediately snapped shut again when it touched the cool, flat, metal blade. Her eyes glittered with terror tears. Gil had jerked her head back, using her braided hair as a handle. Her swimming eyes met only the cold stone ceiling.

"Move, die. Scream, die." He said. Marcy and Elle looked at each other, their own eyes wide; both wondered if he really meant to kill her. Marcy, having known him a fraction longer, wondered if he might kill her anyways, "You have some...I want you to...I need you to help me."

He was unsure of how to begin. He searched for the right mixing of words, the words that just might coax her, but found that this Princess too was slightly different from the one he knew. She didn't wear a Princess's dress either, but what she did wear was much darker than the other's. It wasn't black, she wasn't so far off as this world's Lucca, but instead of the white he had known, this one wore an unfastened long dark purple parka (_it_ is _winter now_ he thought) over a forest green shirt that opened a bit revealing her neck.

"What do y-you want?" She whispered, swallowing hard after almost every word.

"This..." He said taking his hand from her braid and circling it around to her front. She could just barely see his hand reach between her diminutive breasts. At first, she was sure he meant to take her, right there in her own room, perhaps he would do it on her own bed, making it impossible to sleep there ever again, but then again, perhaps he meant to kill her after he had his way with her. His hand, cool, but not cold, to the touch, even through his leather glove, wrapped around her necklace, upon which her Pendant was placed. She seemed even more surprised at this; part of her was not in the least.

"Take it then..." She whispered, her voice unwavering. Then it was Gil's turn to be surprised. He actually withdrew his blade and just pulled the necklace from around her neck. She did not protest, she looked down with her eyes closed, "I suppose I don't need it anymore...Something...didn't happen..."

A pause before he broke the disquieting, forlorn silence, "He died before you met him." Her eyes opened to an empty room. And she wept.

* * *

_**...Behold...**_

* * *


End file.
